


i'll give you the sun

by lazyfish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Fitzmack, Canon Divergence - Episode: s03e10 Maveth, F/F, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Multi, Polyamory, background StaticQuake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27819778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: Things keep going wrong for Jemma Simmons. Her girlfriend gets kidnapped by a sociopath, Jemma gets sucked through a portal to another planet, and she discovers her only companion on said planet is her girlfriend’s missing husband – who she’s never even heard of before. (Even worse, he’s hot.) Her plans to return home are complicated by her fears of what happens when she makes it there, but with some help Jemma comes to find the change she’s so afraid of might not actually be a bad thing.
Relationships: Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 69
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

Jemma spluttered when she stood, squinting her eyes against the sudden darkness around her and the sand swirling through the air. She tried to take a deep breath and recenter herself, but all that did was clog her throat with more grit and make her cough. Jemma thumped herself back onto the sandy earth, pulling the collar of her shirt up over her nose and mouth to keep herself from inhaling more particles. After a minute of breathing with the face covering she had caught her breath - and also had enough time to thoroughly and completely panic.

This was not the base. _Obviously_ it was not the base because the base was indoors, and she was not. Jemma began running through scenarios in her head. One moment she had been outside the monolith’s cage, and the next she had been… wherever she was now. A place with a sky that was a blue unnervingly different from the cerulean she was used to, and with no light to speak of. She tipped her chin back to the sky, blinking through the haze of sand. If she could see the stars, she would know where she was, or at least have a better idea.

Jemma stared and stared and stared, but there wasn’t a single constellation she recognized. With her intimate knowledge of astronomy, she could only think of one scenario where that would be true.

She wasn’t on Earth. That was inconvenient. 

Really, she should have figured it out sooner. Higher gravity meant it was more difficult to breathe, leading to the shortness of breath and dizziness she had attributed to panic - but the tightness in her chest wasn’t going away even though she was able to recognize and rationalize her surroundings. Lovely. Now she had to worry about possibly being crushed to death as well as… she needed to make a list of everything she needed to be worried about, actually.

First: hypoxia. Jemma experimented with taking several consciously deeper breaths to fight against the pressure of increased gravity on her lungs, and found after a minute of breathing more deeply, the dizziness faded and spots stopped dancing across her vision.

Second: dehydration. She had had a glass of water when she was visiting Bobbi in the med bay, but that wasn’t likely to last her long, especially since this new climate was unfortunately arid. Her throat already felt dry from inhaling so much dust. 

Regrettably for Jemma, she was sidetracked from thinking about more items on her list of concerns by the name suddenly cluttering her thoughts. Bobbi, Bobbi, _Bobbi_. 

She was on an alien planet, and Bobbi wasn’t with her. 

It was _good_ Bobbi wasn’t with her because her girlfriend had just been kidnapped and tortured and she didn’t need more on her plate but -

But Bobbi wasn’t _here_ , and suddenly the tightness in Jemma’s chest had nothing to do with increased gravity. How was she supposed to get back to Earth, back to Bobbi, when she didn’t even know how she had gotten to this place to begin with?

Jemma forced in another deep breath. She couldn’t do anything to get back home if she wasn’t alive, and she wasn’t going to be alive for long if she stayed out in the open like this. She would find water, find someplace to stay, and _then_ have a nice, long cry about being alone, scared, and homesick.

Water first. Everyone always said water first. Jemma wracked her brain, trying to remember the survival class she had taken while at SciOps. At the time it had seemed unnecessary - she was going to go out into the field, but she was always going to be accompanied by other trained agents who would be able to retain the information about survivalism more efficiently. At the time most of the survival tips had seemed like common sense, but now that she was in an emergency situation, Jemma could understand why everything had been spelled out; common sense wasn’t quite as common when your life was on the line.

Spitting sand and lack of sun made visibility poor, but Jemma didn’t need to see where she was going so long as she could test her weight every few feet. If she passed by anything large enough to make a staff she would stop for it; prodding her toe on the sand before every step she took was taking a long time, but she didn’t want to end up caught in a sinkhole. That wouldn’t be a pleasant way to die.

Jemma trudged on, step by careful step. The lack of sun made calculating how much time had passed difficult, and she couldn’t rely on other metrics like how long it took her feet to hurt due to the increased gravity. She could’ve been walking for fifteen minutes or for several hours; she just didn’t know. She didn’t dare turn on the cellphone in her pocket for something as simple as time. She didn’t know what she would possibly need the battery for in the future, and it was better to save it for an emergency.

Walking gave her more time to think about Bobbi, which was both a blessing and a curse. It was easier to walk when she had something to distract her from the pain beginning to bloom in the soles of her feet, but Jemma didn’t want to think about the state she had left her girlfriend in. Ward had done a number on her, and it was a miracle Bobbi hadn’t been hurt more before May had been able to find her. The older woman really didn’t get the nickname the Cavalry for nothing - she had gone into the warehouse alone, rescued Bobbi, incapacitated Ward, and scooped up Ward’s poor brainwashed girlfriend so she could get the therapy she so desperately deserved. Jemma had felt entirely inadequate just sitting at the base twiddling her thumbs, but at least she hadn’t gotten in the way. 

Bobbi had been happy to see her. Jemma smiled at the memory - the softness in her girlfriend’s blue eyes, the gentleness in the way she had reached for Jemma, the minute tilt of her head when she had asked Jemma how she was. Like _Jemma_ was the one they needed to worry about.

Jemma heaved a heavy sigh, and tried to imagine what Bobbi would do in this situation. She probably would have found water by now, because she had a better idea of how to find it other than to go downhill and hope she found water at the lowest elevation. Unfortunately this planet seemed to have a fair few dunes and rocky outcroppings, and every time she thought she was going downhill, Jemma was treated to another upward slope in front of her.

“Stop!”

Jemma froze. Surely she hadn’t been walking long enough to hallucinate another human’s voice? No, she definitely would have been forced to stop walking by dehydration before it led to hallucinations. Jemma turned in a circle, trying to find the source of the voice, but couldn’t pinpoint it. Apparently the person behind it was able to see her even though she wasn’t able to see them.

A moment later, Jemma was struck by something that should have been patently obvious from the beginning: there was another human on this planet. Another human who spoke English, which seemed almost too good to be true.

“You’re going the wrong way.” The voice was closer now, and Jemma lifted her hand to her brow to shade her eyes, hoping it would make it easier to distinguish the person from their surroundings. They appeared all at once, like a ghost separating from fog, but even when she could make out the silhouette, there wasn’t much else she could see. The person’s face was covered, as was their hair, and the rest of their body. The only thing vaguely humanoid was the pair of aviator goggles on their face.

“Am I?” Jemma asked weakly.

“If you’re looking for water, yes. A couple hundred more meters of dunes and then there’s the Great Expanse.”

“Great Expanse?” Jemma repeated.

“It’s a desert. More of a desert than the rest of this hell hole.”

“I’m sorry,” Jemma said, blinking several times. “But are you British?” The accent sounded almost familiar, and Jemma couldn’t believe it had only been a few hours at most and she was already homesick.

“As a matter of fact, I am. Now, come on. We should get back inside the perimeter.” The man (or at least Jemma was guessing he was a man, based on his voice) held out his hand - covered in a leather glove - and Jemma regarded it critically.

“If you’re worried I’m an alien, you can ask me whatever questions you want about Earth when we’re not in danger of being eaten.”

“Eaten?” Jemma gulped. It had been naive to assume there wasn’t any flora or fauna just because she couldn’t see any of it - especially when her field of vision was so narrow.

“We need to get back into the perimeter,” the man repeated. 

Jemma took his hand reluctantly, and began walking alongside the stranger. The part of her brain too familiar with science fiction movies was telling her trusting the first person she saw, especially when said person seemed to be entirely too competent, was a bad idea - but the part of her that was interested in surviving insisted she shouldn’t turn down any offer of help. There were plenty of other red flags to look for to determine whether or not she was in a movie that ultimately resulted in her demise.

The man slowed his pace considerably when they had been walking for nearly as much time as Jemma had been alone. If she had to guess she would say they weren’t far from where she started.

“We’re inside the perimeter now,” he said, though Jemma had already guessed as much.

“What do you need a perimeter for?” she asked. “And how did you know when I had crossed it?” It was the latter question she was more interested in; as far she could tell there was no technology to be found except for the phone in her pocket. She supposed the man could have been watching the perimeter, but with the poor visibility she couldn’t imagine him having accidentally spotted her.

“There’s pressure plates every few meters or so. They’ve gotten pretty far buried but you triggered one of them.” Jemma didn’t ignore the way the stranger had answered her second question first. She waited patiently for the other answer, but all she got was heavy breathing. Alright, so maybe she _was_ going to end up gruesomely murdered. Lovely.

“The perimeter is because of It,” the man said eventually. “Which, before you ask -” he held up a hand as if to stop her from talking “- is the apex predator here on Maveth.”

“Maveth,” Jemma said, rolling the word around on her tongue. “It has a name,” she said, more to herself than to her companion. 

He nodded. “Do you have a name?”

“Oh. Yes.” Jemma had almost forgotten they hadn’t been properly introduced. She would have offered a hand to shake, but considering she was still holding onto one of the man’s hands, it would have been rather awkward. “I’m Doctor Jemma Simmons.”

“Lieutenant Lance Hunter,” he said in return. “You can call me Hunter, though.”

“You’re with the army?” Of all the organizations to send a person to space, Jemma hadn’t expected the British Armed Forces to be at the top of the list. “And you can call me Jemma.” Being called _Simmons_ would remind her too much of Fitz and Skye, who were both fond of the nickname.

“Air Force. SAS, if you want to get technical,” he said. “And you?”

“I’m with an organization called S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Hunter halted in his tracks, jerking Jemma to a stop with him. “S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“You’ve heard of it?” Jemma asked. She guessed Lieutenant Hunter had been on the planet for quite some time, given how he was able to navigate the terrain without so much as a glance skyward for confirmation of his bearings. She didn’t know how long, though, so didn’t have a metric for how familiar he ought to be with S.H.I.E.L.D. If he had come to the planet before the Chitauri invasion, his knowing about it was notable; if after, it was worth questioning whether he repeated the name out of positive associations or negative ones. If his trip to Maveth was recent, maybe he thought S.H.I.E.L.D. was synonymous with HYDRA, which would not be fun to explain.

“I - yes, I have,” Hunter said, obviously reluctant to elaborate. “We’re almost there,” he added, beginning to move again. 

“And there would be…?”

“Sorry. My home. It’s a cave.” Hunter huffed out a sigh. “I’m sorry. That probably doesn’t sound all that appealing.”

“Any place where I’m not constantly shaking sand out of my hair sounds appealing,” Jemma promised. She ran her fingers through her hair to prove a point, grimacing as cascades of dust and dirt fell with just the simple movement. She would kill for a shower, but that hardly seemed likely at this point.

Hunter hadn’t been lying about the cave being close. Jemma counted the paces (something she mentally chastised herself for not doing sooner) and found she had just reached two hundred when Hunter gestured to a seemingly innocuous divot in the ground. Hunter released his grip on Jemma and kneeled in front of the divot. He brushed his hand across the surface, removing the sand so Jemma could see what looked like a manhole cover. He moved it to the side, revealing a rope ladder that led down into darkness.

Science fiction movie. Death. 

Or reality. Life.

Jemma swung herself down the ladder, all too aware of the heightened gravity again when it came time for her to descend. She managed not to fall, though she did wobble a fair bit. Hunter came down after her, though not before he had moved the manhole cover back into place, extinguishing all of the light to the caves.

A soft _click_ later and the area was illuminated by a series of lamps strung up on the wall.

“You’re going to need to shake off the sand before we go anywhere else,” he said apologetically. While Jemma busied herself with combing the sand out of her hair and removing the dirt caked onto her clothing, Hunter began stripping out of his outer layers. He draped them across hooks hung just beneath the lamps, and was still working on unwrapping them when Jemma had gotten herself as clean as she was able to. She watched curiously as he transformed, gradually losing bulk until he was left in only a skin-tight long-sleeved shirt and some sort of military-mesh trousers. His helmet and face coverings were the last things to come off, and then Jemma was looking into the face of her savior.

Oddly, the first thing she noticed were the creases at the corners of his eyes. Why did a man stranded on an alien planet have laughter lines? His eyes were kind, too - the sort of eyes Jemma would expect from a savior, but had been afraid to hope for. His beard was neatly trimmed but his hair was longer, beginning to curl at the ends. Hunter seemed aware of the fact she was studying him, and flashed a smile.

“The lights are powered by wind turbines,” he explained, stomping his boots to dislodge the last of the sand caught in the treads. Jemma copied him, oddly enjoying the musicality of the echoes of her stomping through the caves. “I’ll show you those later, if that’s the sort of thing that interests you.”

“Please,” Jemma said. Having any lights at all was more than she had expected, and from the pride in Hunter’s face that was far from the last trick he had up his sleeve.

“We think this used to be a part of a sewer system, actually. The caves are a bit too regular to be natural, we think.”

“We?” Jemma prodded. No one had come to greet them and the manhole being covered by sand meant it was likely no one had disturbed it since when Hunter left to fetch her.

Hunter’s face fell. “Sorry. Force of habit.” He cleared his throat. “There used to be eight of us, but now it’s only me left.”

“Did you kill them?” Jemma blurted out. She had been worried about red flags for being in a horrible science fiction movie, and being the lone survivor on an alien planet did seem rather suspicious.

“No. It did,” Hunter said shortly.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jemma said, regretting putting her foot in her mouth - though it was rather convenient all of Hunter’s companions had died in the same manner, at the jaws of a predator she hadn’t seen. Still, _everything_ could be suspicious if she scrutinized it hard enough, and eventually she wouldn’t have the energy for it all.

“Thank you. Well, this is the main entrance, as you can guess. There’s two wings, left wing and right wing. I’ll let you guess how we named those.” Hunter forced a smile onto his face as he led her out of the entrance chamber and into a hallway that had two branches - unsurprisingly, one to the left and the other to the right.

“I live in the right wing, and moved most of the supplies there as well, but the left wing is where a lot of the research equipment stays,” Hunter explained, taking the right turn. “And of course, since this used to fit eight of us there’s plenty of empty space if you’d like to stay.”

“If I’d like to?” Jemma asked. 

“I’m not going to tell you how to live your life,” Hunter said with a shrug. “I’d certainly like to have someone to talk to, but if you want to strike out on your own I’m not going to stop you. It’s your funeral.”

“I’d rather not have a funeral, thanks.” Jemma followed Hunter, passing by several offshoots of the main hallway, before he stopped at one room in particular. 

“This is where I stay. We have a couple of pallets but nothing really mattress-like. They’re all in here for now so I can have a king-sized bed.”

Jemma stuck her head into the room, chuckling a little at the pallets neatly lined up on the floor. She’d wager the bed they created was a bit larger than a king, but she wasn’t going to begrudge Hunter the one luxury he seemed to have on Maveth.

Other than the bed the room was relatively empty, save for a stack of books in one corner and what appeared to be a photo tacked up onto the wall. Hunter didn’t give her much longer to investigate before continuing on down the corridor. 

“This is where the food supplies are stored. Mostly standard issue MREs, a couple of boxes of water purification tablets, some vitamins that are all expired by now.” The supply area was meticulously organized, with labels by every stack of boxes. Jemma let out a low whistle. It made sense there was excess food if seven people hadn’t survived as long as expected, but at least Hunter wouldn’t be worried about starvation anytime soon. Jemma wouldn’t be worried about it, either, but it was strange not to see herself just a tourist ready to go home at the end of the day. 

“Speaking of. You’re probably parched.” Hunter led her to yet another room and handed her one of a few dozen metal canteens strewed about. Jemma accepted it gratefully - she had been a bit too concerned with a mysterious stranger coming to whisk her away to think much about her thirst, but she was dying for a drink. 

“Slowly,” Hunter warned when she began gulping it down. “We don’t want it all coming back up.”

Jemma slowed down obediently, but didn’t stop drinking until the canteen was empty. Hunter accepted it back, placing it on a small pile near the entranceway.

“We can keep going with the tour, but I just wanted you to know now… what’s yours is mine as long as you want it to be. I have plenty and I’m more than happy to share.” Hunter reached his hand up and rubbed the back of his neck. Bobbi had the same nervous habit, and it panged at Jemma’s heart. “Welcome to Maveth, Jemma.”


	2. Chapter 2

Jemma didn’t have any difficulty waking, because she never quite managed to sleep. Every time she was almost there something would drag her back to waking. Too many times she wondered if anyone had noticed she was missing yet, and what they were doing if they had noticed. Was anyone looking for her, wondering where she’d gone? Was Bobbi hurting, thinking Jemma had walked away when she needed her most? The thoughts were enough to keep Jemma tossing and turning all night long.

Hunter getting up and beginning to move around in the next room over was Jemma’s signal to actually get out of bed and start her day. She changed into one of the new sets of clothes Hunter had given her. The smallest size he had was still too big for her, but working on adjustments was something Hunter said they could do today. He seemed to have quite an agenda planned, and Jemma couldn’t blame him. If she had been stuck on an alien planet alone for who knew how long, she would have a ready-made list for what to do if she had any visitors, too.

Jemma dressed quickly, tying her hair up in a bandana and grabbing a second to wrap around her nose and mouth if Hunter took her outside like he promised.. He had shown her how to tie the bandana so not even the strongest of winds would whip them off, and though wearing a face covering would take some getting used to, she was willing to do it if it meant not dying of a respiratory disease. She slid her feet into the sturdy boots Hunter had provided, though her sensible flats were still in the corner should she ever have need of them.

Who was she kidding? It wasn’t like there were parties happening on Maveth, or anything else she’d need to dress up for.

“Good morning,” she greeted Hunter when she went to the kitchen area. He startled slightly, and Jemma grimaced apologetically. He probably forgot she was there and had quite the shock when he remembered.

“G’morning,” he returned after a moment of composing himself. “Breakfast?”

“Please,” Jemma said, stomach grumbling. She’d forced down a little food and another entire canteen of water before she went to bed the night before, but that hardly was enough to replace the calories she had lost walking for hours on end. 

“Maveth has some decent fruit, if you know where to look,” Hunter said as he ducked into the storeroom. “Want to try some?”

“Is it decent as in won’t kill me or decent as in tastes good?” Jemma asked dubiously.

“Decent as in, I think it might have some nutritional value and is a renewable resource?” Hunter answered. “I don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck here, and fruit for breakfast is a great way to stretch the rations.”

“Fruit it is then,” Jemma sighed. She couldn’t argue with Hunter’s logic, and it would be rather rude to barge in and demand he start changing his way of life so it was to her satisfaction.

“How long have you been on Maveth?” Jemma asked when Hunter emerged with two strange-looking white fruits about the size of small cantaloupes.

“Three and a half years, give or take a few days,” Hunter said, handing her a fruit and leading her down the hallway into yet another antechamber, this one having several ramshackle-looking chairs. “You can just bite into it. Like an apple,” he instructed as he sank into one of the chairs.

Jemma did as she was told, nose scrunching when her teeth made contact with the fruit. Its flesh wasn’t anything like she expected - not soft and juicy like a strawberry or crisp and refreshing like an apple. It was almost meaty, and Jemma wondered if that was what durian was like. May had spent a week trying to convince her, Skye, and Fitz to try the fruit before she’d given up, saying it was their loss.

“It’s an acquired taste,” Hunter said apologetically. Jemma swallowed hard, wincing at the sliminess as the fruit slithered down her throat.

“It’s not the taste that’s the problem.” The taste wasn’t pleasant, certainly, but it wasn’t gag-inducing the way the texture was.

“Maybe we try something else tomorrow, then,” Hunter suggested. “I should be able to show you some of the foraging areas today.”

“It won’t be a problem?” Jemma asked. She wanted more information on the creature that had supposedly disposed of all of Hunter’s other companions, but the only way to get it was through Hunter.

“It is like a lot of the predators we had on Earth. It has a territory it mostly sticks to, and it only seems to come out of that territory during the scarce season.”

“There are seasons here?” Jemma wished everything out of her mouth wasn’t a question, but it was every biologist’s dream to be presented with an alien planet with sentient life and an entire ecosystem that might be analogous to Earth’s. How there could be seasons when Jemma didn’t think there was any sun to speak of was a question worth exploring. And, come to think of it, how plants existed when there was no sunlight to use via photosynthesis. And would she and Hunter even be able to process the nutrients from the alien fruit, or would it simply go through them because it contained the wrong enantiomers of sugars and amino acids? There were simply too many questions and not enough answers.

“Roughly. I’m not a biologist so I don’t understand most of these things.” Hunter shrugged. “My wife was one. She would’ve loved it here. Without the dying part and the having to live on rations bit. She always hated field rations.”

“My girlfriend’s not a fan of those, either,” Jemma said with a small smile. Bobbi would never complain about field rations in front of anyone else but she had no problem telling Jemma how disgusting they were, especially the meat. Jemma had never had the privilege of needing to subsist on field rations for a substantial amount of time so she’d never been able to empathize - but now that would change. If she got back, of course. “You have a wife?” Jemma added, pulling herself from her reminiscing to do more reconnaissance on Hunter.

“Had, I think. I’m not entirely sure.” Hunter’s face fell and he took another bite of fruit before continuing to talk. “When we left for Maveth, we were told it was going to be a simple mission to explore this place and find if there was anything worth bringing back to Earth. A few scientific calculations, but not any that would take a significant amount of time. It was only supposed to be one month.” He inspected the fruit in his hand and let out a long sigh. “At the end of the month instead of taking us home, they gave us more supplies and said the mission would be extended another three months. That was when they brought through the parts for the wind turbines and more of the electrical stuff. I thought they just didn’t want to use as many batteries as we’d need to power everything for three months, but I see now how naive I was. They said they’d be back, but they never were. I don’t know if they left us here on purpose or if something happened, but… As far as my wife was concerned, I should’ve been back three years ago. I expect I’ve been declared KIA.”

Hunter went back to his fruit with a distinctly more melancholy air, and Jemma did the same. She didn’t know how to respond to the sad tale, and felt even worse because her first thought was whether or not she would meet the same fate. A year from now, would Bobbi only think of her in past tense? Would Fitz, and Skye, and May, and Coulson? Would everyone she loved believe she was dead instead of dragged away across the cosmos?

“Water under the bridge,” Hunter declared when he had finished his breakfast. Jemma still had half of her fruit to muscle down, but she was determined to do so. She wasn’t going to waste food when it was scarce.

“You don’t think we’ll make it back?” Jemma asked to distract herself before returning to her fruit.

“I don’t know. We tracked the times and places the portals opened for supply deliveries, and so it’s possible there could be another… But if we do go back and my wife’s moved on, I don’t blame her. She deserves to be happy, whether or not that’s with me.” 

Jemma wasn’t sure she would ever be able to reach that level of selflessness; if Bobbi were to move on, find happiness without her… it would hurt. Maybe she would understand the longer she stayed on maveth, but right now the pain of the separation was too fresh for Jemma even to consider Bobbi choosing someone else.

“When you’re done with that we can go out,” Hunter said. “There’s loads to show you.”

True to his word, when Jemma managed to choke down the last of the not-cantaloupe, he took her on a tour of the outside facilities. The wind and sand had died down a fair bit compared to the day previous, which was a relief. The planet was actually somewhat pleasant without wind and sand blowing at her face, though it still was rather dark and dreary.

There was a surprising amount to be shown, now that Jemma knew how long the infrastructure had been around for. In addition to the flat of shrubbery where the white fruits grew, there was a shallow lake Hunter used for drinking water and baths (complete with a nearby water purification station, since bathing in the water you drank was generally considered to be poor form), the wind farm, and the other edge of the perimeter he had set up to warn him if It ever got too close to the caves.

“The pressure sensors were wired together by our demolitions expert, before It got him,” Hunter explained as they began making their way back to the cave. “They’re connected to some lamps we tied with a red flag. The light goes on and we investigate. We rigged up some clangers too, so we can hear it go off even if we’re asleep.”

“Isn’t it a bad idea to leave the caves if a predator might be waiting for you outside?” Jemma asked dubiously. 

“It is easy to spot. And if what tripped the perimeter isn’t It, it’s normally good for eating,” Hunter said. “We think there might be more life on the other side of the planet, but it’s all on the other end of the No Fly Zone.”

“No Fly Zone?” Jemma repeated. Hunter consistently forgot she didn’t know all of his terminology, even though she’d only been on the planet for less than a day.

“You know how It is a predator with a territory?” Jemma nodded, so Hunter continued. “The No Fly Zone is the heart of its territory. If you go through there, you’ll probably end up dead.” He winced. “That’s what happened to Taylor. He got desperate, wanted to find himself something to make a nice steak, and then just… never came back.”

“You didn’t find a body?”

“What would I do with it?” Hunter asked. “The sandstorms can bury a body just as well as I can.”

Jemma couldn’t argue with that, either.

“I made him a stone, though,” Hunter said thickly. “I made them all stones. Not headstones because we didn’t have the bodies, but memorial stones. In case someone found us, someday, and wanted to know who we were.”

Jemma sucked in a deep breath through her nose. Too often Hunter rendered her speechless with words that were incomprehensible to her - not literally, but emotionally. Scratching a name into a stone, not even to mark the location of a body but just to attest to the existence of someone he had loved… Jemma couldn’t imagine doing that. She didn’t _want_ to imagine it.

“You said you think there used to be humanoid life here?” Jemma prompted when they had sat in silence for a suitable amount of time following the revelation.

“Yeah. On clear days, if you’re at the edge of the No Fly Zone, you can see some rubble. We were going to go scavenging, see if we could find more supplies for the caves, but the more we learned about It the worse the idea seemed.”

“I wonder what happened to them,” Jemma said, biting her lip.

“Best not to think about it.” They arrived at the entrance to their home, and Hunter opened the manhole for her. “All that matters is that they’re gone, and we’re not yet.”

\---

One day on Maveth was surprisingly like the next one. Jemma woke up, ate breakfast with Hunter, and then went about whatever task they made up for themselves. The computer system set up in the back of the caves wasn’t very sophisticated, but Jemma suspected that was to conserve power and not because the technology wasn’t available. She still spent much of her time on it anyways, trying to figure out if any of the data Hunter’s patrol had gathered would be useful in getting them home.

In addition to the computer data there was a huge amount of analog files; notebooks upon notebooks filled with calculations, maps, and other odds and ends Jemma couldn’t always make out. The first few volumes had several different styles of handwriting in them, but a dozen or so of the most recent ones were filled entirely with Hunter’s untidy scrawl. His notes on the terrain and his most detailed map of the planet were both stunning, and betrayed how much attention to detail Hunter was capable of despite his casual demeanor.

He was still as much of an enigma to Jemma as he was the first day, if she was honest. He didn’t talk about his life on Earth unless Jemma asked him a pointed question, and he was always quick to turn the conversation back to her. Jemma got the feeling Hunter was afraid of remembering too much, especially about his wife. As a week on Maveth turned into two weeks, and then a month, Jemma began to understand why that might be; it was hard to think about Bobbi, about Fitz and Skye and the rest of the team, without getting melancholy. 

Melancholy was not a good thing to be on Maveth.

The only thing that kept Jemma from slipping into depression was Hunter. Even if he wasn’t willing to talk about his life on Earth, he was quick with a joke and a smile and showed genuine curiosity when she talked about science, even if she lost him on some of the more technical points. His presence was a comfort, and nearly every day when she went to sleep Jemma was struck by how awful it would have been to live life on Maveth alone.

The day after the second major sandstorm was the first time their routine noticeably deviated. They had been caught unawares and neither of them had been wearing as many layers as they ought to have been, which was to say they both got totally coated in sand. Unlike the first sandstorm Jemma had encountered the day she arrived, the second one blew through in less than an hour - they hadn’t even made it back to the cave by the time it was over.

Normally they bathed separately, but it made no sense for them to separate for the trek to the lake. Jemma averted her eyes while Hunter stripped down and got into the water, and he looked away when she did the same. Since the water reached her neck and his chest, once they were both swimming they could have a conversation - and it was almost easy to forget Hunter was naked.

Only almost. 

Jemma had gone much longer without having sex before - the entirety of her time on the BUS was without sex, as were the first few months at HYDRA - but since meeting Bobbi, Jemma had enjoyed a quite regular sex life. Her body was just as disoriented by the lack of sex as it was the lack of nutrition, and while she tried to curb some of her baser urges with masturbation, Jemma never quite knew whether or not Hunter could hear her. She never heard him pleasuring himself, but again, she wasn’t sure if that was because he was quiet or simply never touched himself. She certainly wasn’t going to ask him that question when he wasn’t even comfortable telling her his wife’s name.

Jemma lived in a state of perpetual sexual frustration, which was why she had put off labelling anything she felt towards Hunter until it was undeniable she was attracted to him. It was entirely possible he was just her libido’s fixation because he was the only one who was around and available, but… When she had been on the BUS, Jemma hadn’t developed crushes on any of her teammates, even though they had been the only romantic partners available. She had been single then, so it would’ve been much more appropriate for her to find one of them attractive than it was for her to find Hunter attractive now, when she had someone she was still hoping to get home to.

“Penny for them?” Hunter asked out of the blue.

“Hmm?” 

“You’re thinking up a storm. I was wondering what got you so focused, because I don’t think it’s sand.” 

“Oh.” Jemma knew herself well enough to know she couldn’t possibly pull off a believable lie, so she just shrugged. “Just some things I need to figure out.” It was vague enough that she didn’t feel guilty, and she doubted Hunter would try pushing her at all. He wasn’t the pushing type, not when she gave him so much leeway with what he was uncomfortable talking about.

“I think one of the things I miss most about Earth is showers,” Hunter mused. “You just can’t think in baths the same way you can in showers.” Hunter in a shower was the last image Jemma needed when she was already warring with herself over finding him attractive, but nevertheless the picture sprang into her head.

“It was nice when the only things I had to think about were my scientific projects, and not survival,” Jemma said. “I’m not sure I would want a shower here to use to ponder my existential dread.”

“You found anything useful with your project here?” Hunter asked carefully. He hadn’t done much prodding about her work with the computer after he’d helped get her set up, which Jemma was grateful for. She didn’t like being badgered about deadlines even when the outcome wasn’t so personal. 

“I have a couple hypotheses, but the computer is rather slow. I’m going to need a new notebook soon to do some calculations by hand.”

“We have plenty,” Hunter said. He yawned, stretching his arms above his head, and Jemma’s eyebrows shot to her hairline.

“You have a tattoo?” When he had stretched his pectorals were just over the surface of the water, and she had caught a glimpse of what was unmistakably tattoo ink over his left pec.

“You haven’t seen it before?”

“What occasions have I had to see you shirtless?” They always got ready in their respective rooms in the morning, and wound down in their own rooms at night. Between that and their separate bathing schedules (which they insisted was so someone could always be watching the perimeter lights and not because they were uncomfortable with each other’s presence) Jemma had never seen Hunter with his shirt off.

“True.” Hunter paddled closer to the shore so he could show off the full image of his tattoo - and along with it his impressively muscled chest. How he retained so much muscle mass while eating such a lean diet, Jemma would never understand, but she appreciated it.

Damnit. She had a girlfriend at home, and she was _going_ to get back to her. Jemma needed to stop ogling Hunter and start formulating a response to his tattoo.

“The SAS logo,” she stated unnecessarily. She recognized the winged dagger from all of the uniform jackets in their unofficial closet.

“I got it when I got in. Was kind of a stupid decision.” Hunter slid back into the water and gave Jemma his trademark easy-going grin. “Would you ever get a tattoo?”

“If there was something I liked well enough,” Jemma shrugged. She had never been particularly drawn to tattoos, not because she had anything against them but because she had never found anything meaningful enough to want to put it on her skin for the rest of her life.

“Where would you put it?” Hunter asked. “I knew a bloke who got a tattoo on his arse,” he added, grin taking on a more wicked cast.

“Not my arse!” Jemma yelped. _Do not think about Hunter’s arse, do not think about -_ damnit, she was thinking about it.

“Where, then?” Hunter asked, splashing at her. Jemma dodged the splash and narrowed her eyes at him. She was not going to sink to his level.

“Depends on what it was. Maybe over my heart would be nice, though.” Jemma still couldn’t picture herself with a tattoo, so knowing where it would be was difficult.

“That girl of yours would probably think it was so romantic,” Hunter teased, splashing again. He was trying to goad her… and he was succeeding.

“She doesn’t like traditional romance,” Jemma snorted. Insisting Bobbi was not like other girls would do nothing but belittle the other amazing women Jemma knew and loved, but her girlfriend did have a rather different perspective on what she thought was appropriate for a relationship. It was a refreshing change of pace, if Jemma was honest - something she missed almost as much as Bobbi herself.

It was also the reason Jemma was _not_ going to let herself think any more about how attractive Lance Hunter was.


	3. Chapter 3

“There’s someplace I want to show you,” Hunter said without preamble at breakfast one morning.

Jemma’s eyebrows shot to her hairline. She was under the impression she had seen everything worth seeing on Maveth, after over a month on the planet. She finished chewing her fruit - a different one than the slimy white thing she had tried her first morning, and much more appealing - before answering. She still wasn’t willing to give up table manners just because she wasn’t in civilization. “Oh?”

“Just someplace I go when I’m missing home more than usual.” Hunter looked like he couldn’t decide whether or not to be embarrassed by what he was telling her. “If I close my eyes it almost reminds me of someplace I used to know on Earth.”

Jemma didn’t know how to respond; she couldn’t get mad at him for wanting to keep something like that close to his chest, even if it did sting a little he hadn’t wanted to share it with her before now. She supposed she should be grateful he was willing to share it all, with the way things had been between them.

It was _odd_ , the way things had been. It felt like a dance, almost, and Jemma had never been much good at dancing. Ever since the day they had bathed together, there was a tension in the air - a mutual acknowledgement that if they never found a way to get back home, there might be some sort of future with them, together, on Maveth. Jemma didn’t want to think about that, though, because it meant giving up on her chances of going back home or seeing Bobbi again.

Waking up and not immediately remembering the cadence of Bobbi’s voice had been by far the scariest experience Jemma had had on Maveth, and since that morning the previous week she had been clinging even harder to her memories of her girlfriend. Accepting that she wouldn’t get back was, frankly, impossible. Jemma was going to keep searching until she’d exhausted every option, and considering she hadn’t even made it through all the notebooks of data Hunter had collected, that wouldn’t be for a while yet. Until that point, when there was no hope left, she wasn’t going to think about a future with Hunter. She hoped he was doing the same - holding out hope that he would get back to Earth and the wife he still seemed to love.

“Let’s get going, then,” Jemma said, forcing her voice to be more chipper than she felt. She hadn’t shared any of her anxieties with Hunter; there were too many feelings tangled through them she didn’t have the time nor patience to tease apart. Acting like everything was fine when everything was decidedly not fine was one of Jemma’s specialties, and she was going to put it to good use.

Preparing themselves to hike to the location Hunter mentioned took longer than the hike itself. They both strapped on aviator goggles and hats, as well as several layers of loose clothing that would be easy to shake sand out of. Jemma didn’t expect a storm this early in the morning, but they’d been wrong before - like the time they’d ended up in the pond together. 

The place itself was a rocky outcropping that had the best visibility of any place on Maveth Jemma had yet to visit; there weren’t any hills for at least a kilometer, just a flat bed of sand. How had she not been there before? Even if it was sentimental, it also looked like the kind of place that would be integral to any sort of scientific research. Hunter obviously wasn’t thinking about that, though. 

Jemma sighed. She felt awful for the amount of times she had to remind herself to be kind to Hunter and sensitive to his predicament. She was going mental after only a few weeks on the planet, and he’d been there exponentially longer. He wasn’t a difficult person to be sympathetic towards, either; for all the times he could be snarky towards her, he cared an awful lot about someone who wasn’t doing much other than eating his rations and supposedly looking for a way off the planet. Hunter had been more than happy to admit he didn’t know enough about science to tell physics from biochemistry, and for all he knew, she was just mucking around with numbers and stringing him along to get him to feed and protect her.

“So, where on Earth does this remind you of?” Jemma asked as she and Hunter settled themselves among the rocks.

“Have you ever been to Arizona?” Hunter asked, flipping his aviator goggles onto the top of his head so he could look her in the eyes. He had a habit of doing that every time they talked - uncovering as much of his face as he safely could at the moment. Jemma copied him, then shook her head in response to his question; she hadn’t been to many places in the United States except for where her S.H.I.E.L.D. missions took her, and they’d never needed to go to Arizona.

“It’s got a lot of areas like this. Rocks, and then suddenly, nothing but desert. My wife and I went there once with her parents.” Hunter snorted. “It was the worst road trip of my life. Her parents hated me and didn’t want me to go running off with their baby girl, but my wife… she was difficult to argue with when she made up her mind.”

Hunter got the far-off look he often did when he spoke about his wife. It was at times like this Jemma always felt bad comparing her relationship with Bobbi to Hunter’s relationship with his wife; to say he missed her felt like an understatement when his feelings were so plain even after years apart.

“When we get back to Earth, we should go to Arizona together,” Jemma said. “And you can show me the place this reminds you of.”

Hunter snapped back to focus, then gave her a weak smile. “I’d like that. Though I have to warn you, not all my memories of this particular outcropping are PG.”

“You had sex in the desert with your wife’s parents watching!?”

“No!” Hunter laughed. “They were at some roadside attraction. We went on a hike they had no interest in. And it wasn’t sex. Just hand stuff.”

“Hand stuff can still count as sex,” Jemma huffed. 

“My wife used to say the same thing.” Hunter rolled his eyes fondly. “I think you two would get on.”

“You said she was a biologist?” Jemma prompted.

“She was, yeah. She, um… She worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. Like you.”

Jemma blinked several times, startled. That explained Hunter’s original reaction to her assertion of her allegiance, but she couldn’t believe it hadn’t come up before now. Of course, she hadn’t done much talking about S.H.I.E.L.D. as an organization since her coming to Maveth. She’d told a few stories about her team, but most of them seemed to sting Hunter as much as telling them stung Jemma. Jemma understood why, of course. If her BUS team had died one by one and left her the only survivor, Jemma wouldn’t have wanted to hear stories of another team and happier times.

She decided, almost immediately after the initial shock wore off, that she wasn’t going to tell Hunter S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated by HYDRA. She didn’t want Hunter to have even a sliver of a doubt about the woman he spoke about like she hung the moon, and allowing him to question if his wife was HYDRA would’ve been unkind of her. Her first days on the planet she had wondered how Hunter stayed so sane when he was all alone, but the answer seemed to be his wife - and the plethora of journals he wrote in. She didn’t want to take that away from him; even if she wanted to, Jemma wasn’t sure she could.

“It was how we met. I was talking about leaving the SAS behind, was planning on it when my contract was up, but then I got here, and…” Hunter sighed, fiddling with his aviators. “I suppose that’s why I’m so hung up on her, you know. I had the opportunity to walk away and build a life with her, and instead I got this mess.”

‘I’m not sure if this helps at all, but I’ve found in life even the most terrible of situations can have positive outcomes, if you’re willing to wait for them,” Jemma said. Being dropped at the bottom of the ocean had led to the most confusing love confession of her life, but it had also helped Fitz realize that he didn’t love her romantically at all - he just hoped that he did, because it would be easier than loving a man the way he wanted to. And then Fitz had found Mack, and she’d gone to HYDRA and found Bobbi. HYDRA itself was another gauntlet that had a worthy prize. Who knew what would’ve happened between her and Bobbi if they’d met any later; they might not have gotten together at all.

“It’s been years, Jemma. I think the only thing waiting for me is a broken heart.” Hunter pulled the bandana down off his face so she could see his frown. “I’m going to be okay, whatever happens. But I think it’s easier not to think about the future right now.”

“You don’t know what’s going to happen when you get back. Maybe she waited for you,” Jemma said earnestly. 

“Jemma,” Hunter sighed. “I’m not the kind of man that people wait years for.”

“You don’t know that.”

“But I _do_.” He curled his knees into his chest and placed his chin on top of them. For perhaps the first time Jemma felt like she was seeing _Lance,_ not Lieutenant Hunter or just Hunter or any of the other people he had been or would be. “I joined the army straight out of foster care, you know? My parents kept trying to get me back but then they’d say it was taking too long and start using again, and…” Jemma’s chest tightened when Hunter scrubbed at his face. Watching the invincible, hypercompetent man she had come to know crumble before her eyes, and furthermore being the cause of his collapse, left a deep ache inside her she didn’t understand. Jemma didn’t delude herself into thinking she was particularly empathetic, but with Hunter, watching him hurt hurt _her_.

“No one’s waited for me before and I’m not expecting anyone to start now. And like I said, if she found someone else and moved on, I’m happy for her.” Hunter took a deep breath, composing himself. “If we get back -”

“ _When_ we get back,” Jemma corrected.

“When we get back I’ll give her a call, just to tell her. And she can decide from there.” Hunter flipped his goggles back down, but not before Jemma saw a tear slide down his cheek. 

“Hunter,” Jemma said, scooting closer to him so she could rest her hand on his thigh. “I would wait for you.”

“You’ve known me for two months, Jemma.”

“But I know that you took a stranger in without question, just because she was lost and afraid. I know that you shared everything you had without reservation. I know that you carved your friends tombstones so one day someone would remember their names. I know that you love a woman who might have left you behind. I know so much about you, and I know I couldn’t give it up just because I was a little bit impatient.”

“Jemma -” Hunter began, obviously ready to argue.

“Please believe me, just this once,” Jemma begged. “Please.” 

Maybe it was because she was attracted to him, maybe it was because she was desperate for him to believe her, maybe it was because she was missing being close to another human, and maybe it was for a different reason altogether - but no matter the reason, Jemma did something stupid, and kissed Lance Hunter. His lips were rough and hers were too, and he seemed more shocked by it than anything else. _Jemma_ was shocked. She wasn’t the kind of person who kissed other people by surprise, especially not when she was already in a relationship and he was too.

“I - I’m sorry,” she stuttered when she drew back. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Hunter just gaped at her, the glass of his goggles reflecting her own confused face back at her. “It’s alright,” he managed to get out a moment later. “Maybe don’t do that again, though. Your girlfriend -”

“And your wife,” Jemma agreed. She clambered to standing as quickly as she could manage, pulling her various coverings back into place. She had a feeling neither of them wanted to linger at the overhang after what she had just done; it was better if they both had space to forget she had tried to kiss him in some misguided attempt at comfort. “Can I see the picture of her you have?” Jemma asked. Perhaps having a face to imagine glaring down at her would keep Jemma from any lecherous thoughts about Hunter. Unfortunately, it was unlikely even an awkward kiss could keep her from thinking about Hunter as someone she was attracted to. If anything, witnessing the small chink in his armor, the raw _humanity_ underneath the mask Hunter was always wearing, just made him more attractive.

Jemma had liked Bobbi when she was invincible Agent Morse, the Mockingbird. She’d loved Bobbi when she was _Bobbi_ , the woman who liked Star Wars and Takis and awful murder mystery novels. Loving a god was one thing; loving a human was another.

Hunter stood, and Jemma tried not to think about Bobbi. There would have to be a confession, of course; she had _cheated_ and she didn’t think being trapped on an alien planet was an adequate excuse. But the confession could only come if she managed to figure out how to get home. Her calculations would be a good excuse to keep her away from Hunter for a good while. Maybe she could also start penning her apology to Bobbi.

“You can see it,” Hunter said after they had already begun returning to the cave. “It’s not much.”

“Because you only thought it would be a short trip. I know. I still want to see her.”

Hunter shrugged back, which Jemma supposed was the best she could expect from him. Jemma’s cheeks burned and she hoped beyond all hope she would not spontaneously combust over mortification from the kiss. That would be the worst way to die on Maveth.

They spent the rest of the walk in silence, mostly because Jemma couldn’t conjure up a conversation topic that would be anything other than an obvious attempt at distracting Hunter from her kissing him. He probably thought asking after his wife was the same, but Jemma couldn’t take that back now.

When they returned to the cave Hunter immediately ducked into his bedroom. Jemma shifted her weight from foot to foot. Luckily Hunter returned before she could start overthinking things (again), photograph in hand. Jemma held her hand out and Hunter deposited the photograph in it gingerly. It seemed to be in relatively good shape for being a few years old and in an environment that wasn’t humidity- or temperature-controlled. The colors were bright and vivid, which Jemma registered before the subjects of the photos.

The photo was of what Jemma presumed was Hunter’s wedding day. There was Hunter, of course, looking dashing in his tuxedo, and beaming next to him was -

Bobbi.

 _Jemma’s_ Bobbi. Even with her blonde hair styled into curls more perfectly coiffed and makeup heavier than Jemma had ever seen, Jemma would have recognized that face - that _smile_ \- anywhere in the world.

Her heart began hammering in her chest and Jemma blinked once, twice, three times, wondering if her mind was playing tricks on her. Blinking didn’t change the image, though; if anything, every time she blinked Jemma found a new detail to assure her this was the woman she loved, from the freckle on her forehead to the dimples in her cheeks.

Bobbi had never mentioned being married before, let alone to a husband who had died. Granted, she didn’t talk much about anything other than S.H.I.E.L.D., but Jemma had assumed that was because S.H.I.E.L.D. was her whole life, and not because Bobbi had anything to hide. Assuming Bobbi was hiding something was uncharitable, Jemma scolded herself. To love someone and lose them, especially like Hunter had been lost…

Jemma realized she had been staring at the photo for far too long, so she looked up at Hunter, forcing a smile onto her face. “She looks beautiful,” Jemma said, offering the photo back carefully. It was true - wearing white, crowned in gold, Bobbi did look beautiful. Like a goddess, like the sun, like everything Jemma had wanted and more. Bobbi had gotten _married_ , had a wedding, and Jemma didn’t even know it had happened. 

“That wasn’t even the best part,” Hunter said sadly. “I’m going to turn in for the night, Jem.”

Jemma nodded, but Hunter had already retreated. It was still barely afternoon, but Jemma understood him needing some time for himself. She needed plenty of time, too, and for an entirely different reason than she expected.

Her girlfriend and Hunter’s wife - the people they were both hoping to get back to - weren’t two separate people at all. They were the same woman. The same glorious, beautiful, intelligent, funny, _amazing_ woman.

What a mess.


	4. Chapter 4

“I think I know how we can get back home.”

It had been two weeks since she had seen Hunter’s photo of Bobbi - two weeks that Jemma had spent poring over the calculations and maps and diagrams with even more single-minded determination than ever before. In those two weeks, though, she had found a solution, a way back home.

Which meant she was going to have to come clean to Hunter, as soon as he picked his jaw up off the floor.

“Sorry?”

“You heard me,” Jemma said firmly. “I double-checked everything and I think I know where and when the portal will open next.”

“And?”

“You’re not going to like it.” Jemma pushed a copy of the map she had made over to Hunter, the location of the next portal opening marked with a neat black X.

“We’re not going into the No Fly Zone.”

“Hunter,” Jemma sighed, exasperated. Maybe she wasn’t suitably fearful of It because she had never actually encountered the creature, but it seemed stupid to throw away their one chance at getting back to Earth just because they _might_ encounter a predator. She might be able to make her case more effectively if she knew the chances of encountering It outside the No Fly Zone and the amount of time they would have to spend on Maveth if they missed this particular portal, but completing and double-checking the calculations had exhausted most of her brain power. Jemma wasn’t above admitting that even her brain needed to rest every once in a while.

“Jemma,” he sighed, mimicking her tone. “I won’t do it. If you want to, that’s fine, but I’m not going there for any reason at all.”

“Not even to get back to Bobbi?”

Hunter stilled. “I didn’t tell you her name.”

“I know you didn’t.” Jemma said, meeting his eyes without flinching.

“Get out.”

“What?”

“I said, get out!” Hunter repeated, standing with enough force to send his chair flying back. Jemma mirrored him, though not as forcefully - she just didn’t want to have to be looking up at him. “You know something you shouldn’t which means either you’re a figment of my imagination or -”

“I am _not_!” Jemma snarled, surprised by her own anger. Did he not know how hard it had been for her to keep the secret from him for this long? Did he not _know_ how many times since she had seen the photo she’d wanted to explain how everything was going horribly sideways? Not to mention they still hadn’t properly talked about the kiss, just awkwardly avoided bringing it up. “I told you I was S.H.I.E.L.D., you know she was S.H.I.E.L.D., just put the pieces together, Hunter!” 

He huffed, crossing his arms over his chest but not sitting back down. “What are the chances of you meeting my wife in an organization that employs thousands of people?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t employ thousands of people anymore,” Jemma said hoarsely. “There’s only about three dozen of us left.”

“Left?” Hunter repeated, eyes going dark and cold.

This had been exactly what Jemma was trying to avoid by not bringing up HYDRA and the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place. It seemed like she had shot herself in the foot, though, and now Hunter was going to be even more pissed when he learned the truth.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. was infiltrated by another organization, HYDRA, that used S.H.I.E.L.D.’s resources for their own gain. HYDRA had its roots in 1940s Germany -”

“I know what HYDRA is,” Hunter interrupted. If he knew HYDRA, he would know what they were working towards wasn’t for the betterment or protection of humanity - not like S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to be. “Had to study it in a military history course. But… Bloody hell. Bob -?”

“Definitely not one of the bad guys,” Jemma assured him. “Not that I knew it at the time, we were both undercover, but…”

“She can be a bit of a hellbeast at times,” Hunter said. His smile was fond despite the biting epithet, and once again Jemma wondered how she was supposed to compete with this man when they were back on the other side of the portal. He was perfect, but even more, she could see how he was perfect for _Bobbi_ \- how his lighthearted sarcasm matched her brittle humor, how his puppy-dog eyes would be able to worm their way through her guardedness. She could see how they would fit together, how they would hold each other at night, how they would -

Jemma forced in a shaking breath. She had admitted to knowing Bobbi, but not to anything more, and she was going to tell Hunter the truth, she was going to tell him all of it.

“Bobbi and I met when we were undercover working to help rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D., and we started a relationship not long after.”

“...How long have you known?” Hunter asked after a heavy pause.

“I recognized her when you showed me the picture. I didn’t know before, I swear.”

“Well.” Hunter sat back in his chair heavily. “Is she happy?”

“Pardon?”

“Bobbi,” Hunter clarified, looking up at Jemma with an indecipherable expression. “Is she happy?”

“She was,” Jemma said, returning to her seat at the table now that Hunter’s original furor seemed to have worn off. “We both were.” Even if the past year had been filled with twists and turns, between Fitz’s brain injury and Skye gaining her powers and fighting against Ward, they had found solace in each other. They had been _happy_. At least until Jemma had gotten swallowed by a space rock and spat out into Hunter’s waiting arms.

“That’s all I wanted for her after I was gone,” Hunter said, wiping at his face. Jemma couldn’t tell if he was crying or just overwhelmed. She didn’t want to know if it was the former; she wasn’t good at comforting crying people, especially not when she was the one who had made them cry. “Christ. What are the odds that of all the people, the two who are stuck on this hell planet are both in love with the same woman?”

“Approximately one in one hundred quintillion,” Jemma answered drily.

“I should’ve known you would know the answer to that.” Hunter laughed, but the sound echoed strangely in the room and in Jemma’s chest.

She hadn’t really thought about the odds before - how awful it would be for Bobbi to lose the two people she loved to the same monster - but they weren’t difficult to calculate. One in seven billion squared was four point nine times ten to the negative nineteenth power - or roughly what she had told Hunter, one in a hundred quintillion.

“She always did love beating the odds, our Bob.”

“I’ve never heard her called Bob before,” Jemma said tentatively, unsure how much to push Hunter with everything she had just told him.

“Before we got married, we were never really sure what to call each other.” Hunter smiled, staring into space as the memory unfurled in front of him. “She hated that all my mates in the SAS would call her my bird. Especially because, you know, she’s the Mockingbird -”

“But she hates _just_ being the Mockingbird, yeah,” Jemma agreed, surprised by the camaraderie of the statement. 

“Right. But she hated that, and she hated calling me her boyfriend. So she just started calling me her Hunter, and I started calling her my Bob and it just… stuck. Even after she was my wife.” Hunter’s smile faded again like the light dimming after sunset - slowly, then all at once. “Suppose this means she never talked about me, then?”

Jemma wanted nothing more than to lie to Hunter, to tell him that Bobbi missed him terribly, but she’d learned from her past mistakes with keeping secrets. “No, she didn’t.”

“Suppose I wouldn’t want to talk about it if I lost someone like this, either,” Hunter said eventually. “I never wanted to be her ghost, you know? And I’m glad she has you.”

“Had me,” Jemma corrected. “Like you said, we’re both here now.” And they both would be for a long time if they didn’t take the chance that was in front of them. 

“And we could both get back to her.” Hunter turned back to the map on the table, his eyes focusing on the black X in the center of the No Fly Zone. 

“I just wanted you to remember what you were fighting for,” Jemma said softly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t,” Hunter assured her, eyes still fixed on the map. “It would have hurt more to know she was still waiting for me when I could never promise I’d come home.” He had said that, of course - that he didn’t want Bobbi to wait - but Jemma would’ve thought it would be different once he had actual, tangible proof she hadn’t. Lance Hunter did nothing but surprise her, though, and Jemma was hoping for one more surprise.

“You can promise that now.” Jemma withdrew the map carefully, forcing Hunter to look at her instead of down at the table. “I’m confident these calculations are correct. Three weeks, and you can go home to her. I promise.”

“ _We_ can go home to her,” Hunter corrected. He reached across the table, palm up. Jemma only hesitated a breath before sliding her fingers through his. “Jemma, I -”

“Please don’t,” Jemma interrupted before Hunter could say something he would regret. He was going to tell her he was fine with her dating Bobbi, she was sure of it. He was going to give up his happiness for hers and that wasn’t _fair_ because she was the one who had kissed him and now he was staring at her and nothing made sense anymore. 

“I just wanted to say thank you,” Hunter whispered. “For giving me any hope at all.” He licked his lips, and of course _that_ was the reason Jemma was looking at them - no other reason at all. “Before you came I was… I was okay, but I had thought I would be here forever, and… and I had resigned myself to a life without any of the things I used to love. Without smiling, without laughter, without sunrises, but -”

“There still aren’t any sunrises here.” She really did feel bad for continuing to cut him off, but Jemma was afraid - both of what he would say and the burning, twisting feeling in her own gut, the magnetism that drew her to him. She wanted to do more than sit there and hold his hand. She wanted to cradle his face, wanted to promise him that it was okay to have hope, wanted to wake up next to him in the morning - but most of all she wanted Bobbi to be happy, and Bobbi wouldn’t be happy if Jemma did any of those things. Bobbi would want her husband back, and Jemma couldn’t let him give up that chance. She couldn’t let either of them give up their chance to be together again for her sake.

“Aren’t there?” Hunter asked, squeezing her hand.

“I don’t understand.” Jemma swallowed hard.

“You are the sun, Jemma. You brought light with you, and warmth, and _hope_. I’ve been in the dark for years and you - the day you came to Maveth was my first sunrise.”

 _I don’t understand_ , she wanted to say again. But that wasn’t the problem - the problem was she understood too well. She knew what it was like to live in darkness and not miss the sun, because he was right down the hallway. She knew, but she didn’t want it to be true, because that put them in an even more precarious position than they were before.

“I just wanted you to know,” Hunter said before the silence could eat them alive. “In case…”

“There won’t need to be an _in case_ ,” Jemma answered stubbornly. There was no reason she would need to know what he was saying unless they were going to end up on Maveth forever, and she had just told him that wasn’t going to happen.

“Okay.” Hunter squeezed her hand again before letting go. “If we have three weeks to prepare, I want to do some scouting. I don’t want to get into the No Fly Zone and figure out the portal’s going to appear at the top of a mountain or something.”

“You’ll do it?” Jemma asked. Hunter had gotten close, with all of his talk about Bobbi, but he had never promised he would go with her to where the portal home might appear. 

“Yeah, Jem.” Hunter raked a hand through his hair. “I’d rather die by It trying to get home than live the rest of my life here, wondering what could have been.”

“Humans are psychologically wired to regret inaction more than action,” Jemma agreed. Which was exactly why she was regretting not letting Hunter finish his sentence more than she had managed to regret the kiss between them. She had felt guilty about the kiss, yes, but regretted it? Definitely not. 

“I also want to make some contingency plans. If something happens to either of us, what the other person will do to make sure they’re safe, no matter what.” Hunter’s brow furrowed, which rarely happened; he seemed to avoid looking serious even when he was _being_ serious. “I… some of the other guys swore that It could… control people. Take their bodies and use them like a puppet. I never thought that was true, but just in case…”

“We could have a code word,” Jemma suggested. “To see if it’s really the other person or just their body.”

“I knew you were the smart one in this relationship.” Hunter flashed her a smile. “How about a code phrase? Just because I’m sure you’d pick a word I couldn’t say. Like _phlebotinum_.”

“You just said phlebotinum!”

“You know what I mean.” Hunter rolled his eyes. “Code phrases are more secure because they’re less likely to come up in casual conversation. Didn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. teach you anything?”

“I’m a scientist!”

“So was Bob, and she knew this!” Hunter laughed. “Trust me, Jemma, and pick a code phrase.”

“Why do I have to pick it?” Jemma asked, cheeks flushing. It wasn’t really _that_ important, because unless she picked a ridiculous code phrase like _I love you_ Hunter wouldn’t know the full extent of her confusion, but it felt like a larger responsibility than it was. His sudden shift from melancholy to teasing was also more than enough to rile her; Jemma was never prepared for how Hunter could pivot from topic to topic so gracefully and leave her behind feeling clumsy and off-balance.

“Because I trust you more than I trust me.”

Damnit. Now there was no way she could shirk the responsibility without looking like a total arse.

She cleared her throat nervously. “The code phrase is ‘I’ll give you the sun’.”

“I’ll give you the sun,” Hunter repeated. Maybe he heard everything she wasn’t willing to say to him or even admit to herself, or maybe he didn’t. From the smile he gave her (large enough to show his teeth but not his dimples), Jemma was inclined to think it was the former. 

She retreated to her room fifteen minutes later, hands sliding beneath the covers until stars burst behind her eyelids and she was left feeling sunburnt and raw with everything she couldn’t say. 


	5. Chapter 5

Jemma woke up to the sound of New Year’s Day - the thick metallic clanking of pots and pans banging together without a care for anyone who might actually value their sleep. She sat up groggily, rubbing at her eyes. There were no fireworks, no joyful shouting, and Jemma had to remind herself it was the middle of the summer, and she wasn’t on Earth. What was Hunter doing to make such a ruckus?

“Get up!” His voice filled her ears just a moment after the thought had crossed her mind. “Something crossed the perimeter.”

Jemma bolted upright. No. Now was _not_ the time she was going to let Hunter run off on his own, possibly to sacrifice himself to Maveth’s apex predator. Not when they were just three days away from home - three days away from Bobbi.

She threw herself out of bed, tugging on her outside gear over the size-too-big fatigues that had become her pajamas. When she stumbled into the hallway, still half-asleep, she saw the lantern indicating a perimeter breach was lit - and that must have been what was causing the godawful noise, too.

“Face covering.” Hunter handed her the bandana she’d forgotten to grab for herself, along with another jacket to put on to protect against the dust. “Just in and out, to see what’s happening. Understand?”

Jemma nodded, tying the scarf around her face and flipping her goggles down over her eyes. The sandstorms had picked up significantly in the past two weeks, which she hadn’t thought was possible. Hunter said it was just the changing seasons, but to Jemma it felt like more; a bad omen, or maybe a parting shot from the planet that obviously hated them.

Hunter handed her a makeshift spear as she climbed the ladder out of their bunker, and they set off for the perimeter at a brisk pace. 

“ _Jemma!_ ”

She froze. “Did you hear that?”

Hunter nodded.

“Do you think it’s -?”

Hunter nodded again, confirming Jemma’s suspicions. She had _recognized_ the voice, and it was easy to attribute that to hallucinations from - well, from any manner of things, but if Hunter recognized it, too…

They quickened their pace from a walk to a jog, but after about ten seconds both of their self-control had snapped, and they were flat-out sprinting towards the sound of Bobbi’s voice. 

“Bobbi!” Jemma called back, voice muffled by her face covering. “ _Bobbi!_ ”

Hunter stayed eerily silent beside her, and when Jemma glanced over what she managed to see of him through the haze of sand was a furrowed brow and hollow cheeks. The sickly blue light of the planet and the pallor of his skin made Hunter look gaunt, like he shouldn’t have been capable of moving nearly as fast as he was. But they were both still moving, towards what could’ve been their shared hallucination, but also could’ve been the person they had both spent months dreaming about.

“ _Jemma!_ ” Her name was clearer the second time around, and Jemma adjusted her course so she was more accurate in the direction of her steps. She didn’t want to waste a single moment stumbling around blindly when she could spend that time getting closer to Bobbi. Seconds and minutes stretched and twisted until Jemma couldn’t be sure how much time had passed; the only thing she was sure of was that she was getting closer to Bobbi, closer to home.

Then, four things happened at once. One: the air around her chilled noticeably, like she had just stepped into an icebox. Two: a high, reedy screech filled the air. Three: the sand around them kicked up into an even more furious storm. Four: Hunter stopped moving.

“What are you doing?” Jemma asked, wheeling around to face him.

“It is coming.” She couldn’t see Hunter’s eyes through the lenses of his aviators, but she didn’t need to be able to see them to know he was terrified. His hands and his voice were both shaking, his shoulders tensed, and his skin had gone even more waxen. 

“Then you can’t _stop_! Run, Hunter!” Jemma panted. Now that she wasn’t single-mindedly focused on Bobbi, her lungs were beginning to burn with the exertion of moving so fast for so long. She couldn’t stay still for much longer or she wouldn’t be able to start moving again.

“If we can hear It, it’s too late,” Hunter said sadly. “Promise me something, Jemma.”

“What are you saying? We need to move!”

“Promise me you’ll give her the sun.” Without another word Hunter bolted in the opposite direction of Bobbi’s voice. Jemma lunged towards him, but she was too slow to be able to grab onto any of his clothing, and it didn’t take longer than a moment for him to disappear out of sight into the sand.

Her first instinct was to chase after him - to hunt him down and drag him along with her and insist that they had spent the past four months living together, and if it came down to it they were going to die together, too. But then… 

“Jemma, please!” 

She couldn’t let Bobbi be alone any longer. She pretended she didn’t need anyone, but Bobbi was _bad_ at being alone; she bottled up her emotions and wouldn’t spit them out until it was too late. Loving Bobbi was like looking in a mirror; all Jemma’s flaws were reflected back at her, maybe a little scratched and warped, but still beautiful. Loving someone who was like her had helped Jemma love herself better, and she couldn’t give that up. Not now, with Bobbi’s voice ringing in her ears. Not now, when she was so close to being back home.

“Bobbi!” Jemma’s voice cracked on the second syllable of her girlfriend’s name. “Bobbi, where are you!?”

”I’m right here!” She sounded close enough to touch, and Jemma reached her hands in front of her blindly. The air had warmed and the screeching had stopped but there was still so much _sand_ in between her and where she needed to be!

“I’m right here, Jemma!” Bobbi repeated. Suddenly there was a hand in hers, warm fingers around her wrist, and Jemma found herself being dragged in a direction she didn’t know. Every step she took was one step further from Hunter, and Jemma’s heart seized in her chest. She was leaving him alone again. She opened her mouth to shout for him, to let her know she was coming back - _they_ were coming back - but Jemma found herself choking on the words, the fabric of her mask clogging her nose and mouth in a way they never had before. She tasted cotton and sand and Bobbi’s perfume and -

Jemma fell to the ground, coughing. It took a long second for her to realize they weren’t on Maveth anymore - they were sitting in a pile of rubble in the center of a dimly-lit room, Bobbi’s arms tight around her shoulders. Their team peered down at them from above, excitement and relief plain on their faces.

“Jemma!” Fitz threw himself into the pit she and Bobbi were in, and Jemma barely had time to register his voice before he was enveloping her in a hug that was too tight, too _much_. It took all of her self-control not to push him off her, and Jemma focused on steadying her breathing while Fitz clung to her. She wanted to be happy to be back, but she was sitting in the middle of destruction and Hunter wasn’t with her. She wanted to be happy but _Hunter wasn’t with her_. She had promised him he would come home, and she had broken her promise.

Fitz withdrew and helped her take off the bandana covering her mouth - she could breathe again, so that was a plus - while Bobbi gently maneuvered her to standing. The jacket around her shoulders was heavy and unfamiliar, but oddly comforting. It was from Maveth. She had just been on Maveth, and now she wasn’t, and her head was spinning. Everyone was talking, but Jemma didn’t hear any of it. The world galloped on around her, but Jemma was frozen. Even as Mack helped lift her out of the pit, even as Skye gave her a tired smile ( _Skye brought her home_ , the part of Jemma’s brain that was still functional whispered giddily), Jemma was frozen. Nothing felt real - fifteen minutes ago she had been waking up to the clanging sound and now she was back home, and it wasn’t _real_.

She squeezed Bobbi’s hand in a desperate attempt to ground herself, tension bleeding out slightly when Bobbi squeezed back. It hadn’t taken long for Bobbi, at least, to realize Jemma was overwhelmed and adjust her behavior accordingly. She hadn’t tried to speak since they’d returned, even though four months of words were looming in the space between them.

The rest of the team began filing out of whatever room they were in, leaving Jemma and Bobbi alone. Under other circumstances Jemma would have been fascinated by studying the contraption in the room and the way it apparently used resonance to open the monolith, but instead she was staring at the pile of tar-black rubble that was quite possibly the only opening between their world and Maveth.

She knelt at the edge of the pit, tears threatening to spill over.

“What’s wrong?” Bobbi asked gently, kneeling beside Jemma and squeezing her hand again.

“I need to go back.” It was the first thing she had said since returning to Earth, and obviously wasn’t what Bobbi expected to hear. She recoiled visibly, blinking in confusion.

“What?”

“I need to go back,” Jemma repeated more firmly, finding her voice again. Breathing felt strange again, the opposite of how she had felt first getting to Maveth. Maybe that was why she felt like she was floating - not the surreality of the situation, but literally because Earth had less gravity than Maveth did, and comparatively, she _was_ floating. That would also explain why she felt woozy - there was more oxygen coursing through her blood than her body and brain knew what to do with. Physiological changes resulting from the differences between the two planets was a much more comfortable explanation than any sort of guilt or pain, and Jemma clung to it as her eyes slid shut, a single tear beading on her lower lashes.

“Jemma, I’m sure whatever you left there can be replaced,” Bobbi said.

“That’s the problem!” Jemma croaked. “I can’t - I can’t replace it.” Telling Hunter about Bobbi had been difficult, but telling Bobbi about Hunter was proving just as onerous, if not even more so. How could she tell her girlfriend her husband was not only alive, but was waiting on the other end of the galaxy, on the other side of a door that had just been slammed shut? “I can’t replace him.”

Bobbi dropped her hand as if she had been burned, and Jemma struggled to find her words before Bobbi got the entirely wrong idea about what had happened on Maveth. _I wouldn’t replace you so easily,_ she wanted to say. Instead Jemma dug her hands into the pocket of the jacket Hunter had lent her, startling slightly when her fingers brushed against something smooth and metallic.

She closed her fingers around it until she could feel the edges of the metal biting into her skin, then withdrew her hand slowly. When she opened her palm again there was a circular keychain sitting in the center of it. _Franny’s Saloon_ , it read. Jemma didn’t recognize the keychain - why did she not recognize it after spending four months with Hunter? - but Bobbi’s face crumpled. Had Hunter meant to give Jemma this jacket with a memento of Bobbi’s in it, just in case he didn’t make it? Her stomach twisted uncomfortably.

“No,” Bobbi breathed. She reached for the keychain and Jemma let her take it. Bobbi ran her thumb along the edge of the metal circle, the movement smooth and easy, like something she had forgotten and was remembering again. Bobbi’s lower lip began to tremble almost imperceptibly, and Jemma knew she understood what was happening, and why Jemma was so insistent this not be their last trip to Maveth.

“I need to go back,” Jemma said for the third time. “He’s alive, Bobbi. Hunter is alive.”


	6. Chapter 6

Bobbi sat silently the entire trip back to the base; Jemma didn’t mind, because the hum of the airplane wormed under her skin in the most unpleasant way possible and it took all of her mental power not to slide into panic or catatonia. She was equally close to both, which shouldn’t have been possible and yet was.

When they arrived at the Playground Jemma was immediately taken to the medical bay, where Lincoln Campbell was waiting for her. Jemma thought he was on the run after the battle at Afterlife, but she could also conjure up a reason or two he might’ve decided to make his home with S.H.I.E.L.D. And unlike anyone else on the team, he had a bona fide medical degree so Jemma felt more than safe in his hands.

“Dr. Simmons,” he greeted her as she took a seat on the examination table. Bobbi hovered nearby, and Jemma didn’t have the fortitude to beckon her closer. She was supposed to be giving Bobbi up, not inviting her in.

“Dr. Campbell,” Jemma said in return.

“I’m just going to give you a quick checkup and draw some blood to see if there’s anything we need to be immediately concerned about, alright?”

Jemma nodded, and tried not to be too horrible of a patient while Lincoln went through his checkup. She had a feeling she failed somewhat in that regard - she kept getting lost in her own thoughts, or flinching at unexpected moments. The clang of glass on metal when Lincoln accidentally dropped his mercury thermometer on the sterilization tray was enough to make Jemma jump several inches. There hadn’t been anything glass on Maveth, and their metal was mostly limited to cookware and their alarm system. Having technology again, being constantly surrounded by noise again… that would be strange. Jemma had gotten too used to silence with nothing to keep her company other than the sound of her own breathing or Hunter’s.

Jemma glanced at Bobbi. She had been studying Jemma the whole duration of the checkup, probably looking for signs for concern Lincoln had missed. The only time Bobbi looked away was, predictably, when Jemma had to be stabbed with the needle to have her blood drawn, and even then Bobbi looked back as soon as it was safe to.

“I have to say, Jemma, I’m amazed by how healthy you seem to be,” Lincoln said when he had finished his assessment. “You don’t seem to be showing signs of anything we’d be worried about. Not even vitamin D deficiency, though I’d have to double-check with the bloodwork to make sure all your levels are fine.”

“We mostly ate MREs. And fruit,” Jemma offered quietly. 

Lincoln stopped, his fingers hovering over his keyboard. “We?”

Right. No one other than Bobbi knew she hadn’t been alone on Maveth - no one other than Bobbi knew she was already trying to figure out how to fling herself back across the universe.

“I’ll put it all in my report to Coulson.” Jemma didn’t allow herself to look at Bobbi, not wanting to give Lincoln even more of a reason to wonder than he already had. “If you’re not opposed, I’d like to have some X-rays done. The gravity on Maveth was noticeably higher than here on Earth and I’m worried there might be microfractures in my long bones.”

“I - yeah, of course. We might need to wait a day or two so I can get an X-ray tech from somewhere. We’re working on building up a network of contractors, but it’s slow going.”

“I’d imagine,” Jemma said with a tight smile. S.H.I.E.L.D. could work remarkably fast at some points, but at others it got tangled in a bureaucratic mess. Frankly, Jemma was terrified if she did try to go back to Maveth through official channels, she’d get caught in that same web. With Bobbi on her side, and Fitz… maybe things didn’t have to be so official. She’d have to discuss it with them both first, though; while she was certain Bobbi would sacrifice her career to have Hunter back, she didn’t want to force Fitz to make that same decision even for the sake of a friend.

When Lincoln dismissed her, satisfied she wasn’t going to drop dead in the middle of the night, Jemma wasn’t sure where she should go. She technically had a bunk of her own, but before she had been sucked up by the monolith she’d been staying almost exclusively with Bobbi, only returning to her own room when she stayed in the lab too late and didn't want to wake her girlfriend up. Even then Bobbi had insisted it was fine and she could fall back asleep easily even if Jemma did wake her. It felt wrong to go to the room she shared with Bobbi, though, with the question of Hunter and what to do next still heavy in the air.

Bobbi took her hand silently, and against her better judgement Jemma allowed herself to be led down the familiar route to their bunk. 

Jemma tried not to flinch when the lock on the door clicked into place. Locks were another thing they hadn’t had on Maveth, or doors at all - everything had just been open with the exception of the grate protecting the cave system.

“Did I do something wrong?” Bobbi asked after a minute of them both standing awkwardly near the door, unwilling to move.

“I… I understand if you need to break up with me,” Jemma said. She went to shove her hands into her pockets only to realize she was wearing her Maveth outfit, which had no pockets. She probably didn’t smell the most pleasant, either - she needed a shower, and a hot meal, and sleep, but she also needed for this all to be sorted so she could cry in peace.

“Break up with you?” Bobbi repeated. “Jemma, I just got you back!”

“And I told you your husband is alive!” Jemma retorted. “And I don’t know how you feel about him, but you probably wouldn’t have been apart if it weren’t for that stupid planet, and you deserve - you both deserve the chance to live the life you wanted.”

“Jemma.” Bobbi stepped towards her hesitantly, but Jemma forced herself to stand her ground. Bobbi paused, then lifted her hand to Jemma’s cheek. It was warm, softer than anything Jemma had felt in a long while, and smelled like lotion she didn’t recognize but tickled at her nose. “I’m not going to pretend that I don’t want to get Lance back. And I’m not… I’m not sure what happens if we do get him back. But the woman who married him… I guess she went to Maveth, too, because I’m not her anymore.” Bobbi swiped her thumb along Jemma’s cheekbone gently. “I don’t want to break up with you because of something that might be. And if we _do_ break up, I want it to be my choice, not a choice you’re making for me. Understand?”

“But -”

“No buts,” Bobbi interrupted. “Please just… let me have this.” She inhaled deeply, sighing the breath out into the space between them. “I thought I lost you both,” Bobbi whispered, voice watery. “And I didn’t know what I was going to do without you.”

Jemma didn’t think before throwing her arms around Bobbi’s shoulders and pulling her girlfriend into a tight hug. She pressed a kiss to Bobbi’s cheek before burying her nose in her girlfriend’s neck. “You didn’t lose us,” she promised. “The whole time, all either of us thought about was getting back to you.” Jemma kept her face pressed into Bobbi’s skin, and for maybe the first time in the hours since returned from Maveth, let herself relax entirely. Her muscles went limp and she was a dead weight in Bobbi’s arms, but Bobbi was holding onto her so tightly that it hardly mattered. 

Jemma didn’t even realize she was crying until she drew back from Bobbi and found a wet stain on her girlfriend’s skin. Jemma’s own shoulder was damp, and when her eyes met Bobbi’s again there was a silent agreement that neither would acknowledge the other crying, except for in the time it took to brush away the other person’s tears.

“I want to get him back, too, you know,” Jemma said quietly. “I made him a promise, that he would get back to you.”

“You knew it was me?” Bobbi asked.

“Not for the first while. But he showed me a picture of the day you got married.”

Bobbi sniffled. “Yeah?”

Jemma looked down at her feet. “You were beautiful.”

“I felt beautiful. And I was so excited for a life with him. But four months later he was gone and…”

“And,” Jemma agreed. It hadn’t occurred to her before that she had spent almost exactly as much time on Maveth as Bobbi and Hunter had spent married; if she was a poet and not a scientist she would’ve had something pretty to say about that. Right now, though, science was telling her that she needed to sit down, because her head was starting to spin again. Too many emotions, Jemma decided. Things were much easier when she could just shove everything down, but…

She made her way over to the bed and sat down, Bobbi trailing behind her. Bobbi’s hand covered Jemma’s knee and Jemma looked over at her girlfriend, wondering what must’ve been going through Bobbi’s head. Seeing Bobbi almost cry, and then actually cry, made for a strange enough day even without the added emotional baggage of the not-dead husband and Jemma’s own return from an alien planet.

“I kissed him,” she blurted out.

Bobbi _laughed_ , which was not the reaction Jemma had expected whatsoever.

“You’re telling me that you, my girlfriend, met Lance, my husband, on an alien planet hundreds of lightyears from home… and you liked him enough to kiss him?!”

“Well you must agree he’s very attractive!” Jemma defended. “And he looked so sad, and I just wanted to make him feel better, and -”

“Jemma, I am honestly not interested in _any_ explanation you have to give, because what you just said is so absolutely batshit insane that I will never, _ever_ be able to process it.” Bobbi covered her face with her hands. “Did he kiss you back?”

“No,” Jemma admitted. “He knew I had a girlfriend and he still wasn’t sure what had happened to you, and at that point we didn’t know my girlfriend and his wife were the same person, so…”

“Would you want to kiss him again?” Bobbi asked, dragging her hands down her face until they ended up in her lap.

“…What do you mean?”

“I mean, would you want to kiss him again? If I wasn’t an issue?” Bobbi prompted.

 _You are an issue_ , Jemma wanted to argue, but she had a feeling Bobbi was getting at something much deeper than just Jemma’s desire to kiss Hunter. “If you were okay with it, and he agreed… I suppose I wouldn’t mind kissing him again.” Jemma’s cheeks flamed, but rather than pursue the line of questioning any further, Bobbi just tapped a finger on her chin like she was considering something important.

“I have an idea,” Bobbi said after a long minute of silence. “But I don’t want to tell you until after we get Hunter back, in case it’s a bad one.”

“You don’t have bad ideas,” Jemma said fondly.

“Honey, you know that’s not true.”

“They’re not bad ideas if they turn out alright.”

“I hope you know Daisy’s told me _all_ about your bad girl shenanigans.”

Jemma blinked. “Daisy?”

“Oh, wow. There’s a lot I have to fill you in on.” That had been obvious before, but mentioning Daisy - who Jemma assumed was Skye, since there was no one else who used the phrase ‘bad girl shenanigans’ with her - seemed to have brought it to light. 

“Come get dinner with me?” Bobbi offered. “You, me, no one else. I’ll catch you up on all the juicy gossip.”

Jemma’s lips turned up at the corners. “Deal.”

\---

Jemma knew she had missed a lot, but just how much wasn’t obvious until Bobbi looked at her phone and realized it was midnight and they were still talking. Granted, they’d gone off on more than one tangent throughout the course of their meal. They’d escaped to the bedroom again as soon as they’d finished to keep Jemma from getting overwhelmed by the background buzz of the base, but once they were in the bedroom Jemma hadn’t had much difficulty focusing on Bobbi’s stories. She knew she was safe tucked into Bobbi’s side, familiar perfume serving as a grounding point if she got too close to panicking.

“You need to sleep,” Bobbi announced after putting her phone down. “Seriously, why didn’t you say something earlier?”

“When I was on Maveth I spent my free time making a list of all the things I missed about Earth,” Jemma said, “and your voice was always at the top of it.”

“Maveth made you sappier,” Bobbi observed quietly.

“ _Hunter_ made me sappier,” Jemma corrected. “And so did… so did thinking I’d never see you again. It made me realize a lot about… everything, really.” More than anything, it had made Jemma realize there was nothing she wanted more than to make Bobbi happy - hence the ill-fated attempt at breaking up with her. Second to that, though, Jemma had realized she wanted to be with Bobbi forever; she never wanted to be in a position where they were separated by that much space ever again. It was the closest Jemma had ever come to considering marriage in her life, and she hadn’t even let it sink in fully until she had Bobbi again - which was to say, it had been playing in the back of her mind for the last few hours like an annoying radio that just wouldn’t shut off.

“I’m glad you saw me again.” Bobbi turned to kiss the side of Jemma’s head carefully.

“I’m glad I did, too.” Jemma wiggled away from Bobbi enough that she could look her girlfriend in the eye. “And we’re going to see Hunter again.”

“We’re going to try,” Bobbi conceded.

Jemma didn’t have the heart to argue; she could see why Bobbi wasn’t able to get her hopes up, but Jemma was going to fight until her last breath to keep the promise she made to him. For Hunter’s sake, yes, but for Bobbi’s too. Maybe they wouldn’t have the happy ending they’d dreamed of when they got married, but maybe they could make a new happy ending, one Jemma could be a part of somehow.

“Can I kiss you?” Jemma whispered. She’d been avoiding it mostly because of the constant waves of overstimulation and how difficult it was to keep herself from floating off as it was. Adding in the rush of hormones that came with kissing someone she really liked didn't seem like a good idea, until it did. 

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Bobbi leaned in and Jemma tipped her head back so their lips could meet in the middle. It had been too long since she had kissed someone, Jemma decided immediately. The kiss with Hunter barely counted, because it wasn’t a kiss of someone who knew her intimately - it wasn’t a kiss to pour her heart and soul into, a kiss to say all the things words couldn’t. Kissing Bobbi was all of those things and more. Jemma had been worried about feeling untethered, but she shouldn’t have been. Like everything else about Bobbi, the kiss was grounding. Jemma was real and she was home, and she knew both of those things for certain because Bobbi was kissing her and she tasted like vanilla and hope.

 _I love you,_ Jemma wanted to say when she drew back, breathless. She had said the words a hundred times before and meant them every time. She would mean them if she said them now, too, but they didn’t feel like enough. They weren’t enough to make up for the four months she had been away, for the mistakes she had made and the ones she hadn’t. Jemma wanted - _needed_ \- something more than _I love you_.

She looked at Bobbi in those incredibly blue eyes (eyes that made her love the color blue again after the bottom of the ocean had nearly taken that love away), and said the only words she could think of that could possibly mean more than love.

“I’ll give you the sun,” Jemma whispered.

Bobbi tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes slightly before swooping in for another quick kiss. “You don’t have to,” she said, pulling Jemma back into her side. “I already have it.”

They were probably going to disagree forever about that, Jemma mused as she combed her fingers through Bobbi’s golden hair. When they had Hunter back at least he would be on Jemma’s side - he would understand that no matter how much light Bobbi had, she would always deserve more. 

The woman she loved had been through more darkness than Jemma could ever hope to know, but she would see light again. Jemma would make sure of it.


	7. Chapter 7

Maybe going into the lab had been a bad idea. Everything was louder than Jemma remembered, and the fluorescent white lights hurt her eyes after so long with only the bluish light of Maveth’s sky and the warm orangey glow of the lamps she and Hunter used underground. She blinked hard against the light and slid her fingers through Bobbi’s, relaxing when Bobbi squeezed her hand.

“Fitz,” Bobbi said when they reached his work bench. “Jemma and I have a huge favor to ask you.”

Fitz looked up from the piece of monolith he was studying, flipping the magnifying glasses he was wearing out of his eyes. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You’re not about to like it any more,” Bobbi admitted.

“I need to go back to Maveth.” There was no point in keeping Fitz in suspense any longer.

“Absolutely not!”

“ _Fitz_ ,” Jemma said, cutting him off before he could go on a tirade. “I wasn’t alone on Maveth.” She had told Coulson as much on her morning debrief, though she had neglected to mention the identity of her companion or his relationship to Bobbi. Coulson hadn’t asked about extraction for Hunter, so Jemma assumed it wasn’t likely to happen.

“And they’re really important enough you want to go back?” Fitz asked dubiously.

“Yes,” Jemma answered immediately. “He matters to me. A lot.” And that was before even considering how much Hunter mattered to _Bobbi_.

“You’re okay with this?” Fitz asked, turning to look at Bobbi instead.

“I am.” Bobbi’s poker face didn’t waver even when Fitz stared at her for longer than was strictly necessary.

“Alright. I’m assuming you have some sort of plan and you’re not just expecting me to pull another monolith out of my arse.”

“You know the molecular replicator that was going to be our senior thesis project?” Jemma asked. It had been a fantastic idea - replicating the molecular structure of any material, with special attention paid to biological matter. It had the potential to revolutionize medical care, especially organ transplants, but they’d never been able to get past a rudimentary design.

“I do,” Fitz sighed. “You think we can replicate the monolith and go back?”

“I imagine something about its molecular structure was what made it able to open a portal between here and Maveth, so yes, I think if we manage to replicate it we’ll be able to go back.”

“And then we’ll never have to think about it again?”

“Hopefully, yes.” Jemma knew better than to make any promises she couldn’t keep, but she couldn’t imagine wanting to return to Maveth again after retrieving Hunter. Sure, the planet had a wealth of knowledge that she would want to explore under better circumstances, but Jemma wasn’t confident in their ability to enter and exit the planet as they please - not when bringing her back the first time had taken such a toll on Daisy. 

“I should have the blueprints for the replicator somewhere on my harddrive,” Fitz said. 

“Excellent.” Jemma straightened. “Bobbi can assist you with anything on the biological side you might need.”

“Bobbi!?” Fitz repeated. “No offense,” he said when he realized she was standing right there, a half-beat too late to make anyone with social skills think he actually meant not to offend.

“Fitz, I am sleep deprived and the fluorescent lights are already giving me a headache. I can’t - I’m not at my best. And contrary to what you might believe, Bobbi at her best is much, _much_ preferable to me not at mine.” 

Bobbi squeezed Jemma’s hand gently, and she didn’t know whether it was supposed to be comfort for admitting she was in pain or thanks for defending her girlfriend’s scientific skills.

“This is important to her, too,” Jemma said finally. Since Bobbi hadn’t admitted to her relationship with Hunter, she assumed her girlfriend wanted to keep it a secret and she would respect that - but everyone knew science was better when you were invested in the end result, and Jemma didn’t want Fitz to get the wrong idea. Just because the molecular replicator wasn’t a long-abandoned passion project of Bobbi’s didn’t mean she wasn’t going to work her hardest on bringing it to life.

“Go get some sleep, Jem,” Bobbi said, releasing her hand. “And don’t forget to eat.”

Right. Eating was also something she needed to remember to do now that her Circadian rhythm was even more royally fucked than it had been on Maveth. Jemma nodded and exited the lab, already rubbing at her temples. She needed a long nap in a dark room and then _maybe_ she could offer some help 

\---

Jemma never did get to offer her brain to the brain trust - after her nap Daisy had forced her to sit down and eat lunch, and the time spent around people was, frankly, draining. Jemma had always considered herself an introvert, but after months at a time only seeing the same person, her introverted tendencies had been exacerbated. The idea of going back to the lab and having to interact with other people just made Jemma’s head hurt, so she returned to the solitude of her bedroom with her tablet to begin catching up on all the scientific journals she had missed while she was on Maveth.

The door to the bedroom swung open a few hours later, and Bobbi shucked off her lab coat as she crossed the small space to sink onto the bed beside Jemma. Jemma smiled wearily as she brushed the hair plastered to Bobbi’s forehead back, revealing a thick red line. “You should loosen your goggles,” Jemma tutted softly, tracing her thumb along the google line.

“With Fitz around? Not a chance.”

“He’s not _that_ bad,” Jemma protested.

“Things have a much, much higher chance of exploding if Fitz is in the room, Jemma,” Bobbi said, a ghost of a smile dancing on her lips. “ _Engineers._ ”

“Engineers,” Jemma agreed. Biologists had their own problems - biocontaminants were a fair bit nastier than the metal alloy scraps Fitz had leftover on his projects - but at least (most of the time) their experiments wouldn’t produce shrapnel if something went horribly awry. “Did you two get on alright without me?” Jemma asked, moving the tips of her fingers to the furrows in Bobbi’s cheeks the goggles had also caused. The skin was soft under her touch, and Jemma wondered briefly how her own hands felt - if they were rougher than Bobbi remembered, if she had calluses places she hadn’t before. 

“Once Fitz realized I don’t have the ability to read his mind, yeah,” Bobbi said. She caught Jemma’s wrist in her hand, turning Jemma’s hand gently so she could place a kiss in the palm. “How have you been?”

“I want to hear about your work first,” Jemma said stubbornly. 

“I don’t… I don’t want to get your hopes up.” Bobbi kissed Jemma’s palm again softly. _I don’t want to get my own hopes up,_ was what Bobbi didn’t say but Jemma heard.

“I won’t. But I deserve to know what’s happening, don’t I?”

“You do.” Bobbi let Jemma’s hand drop into her lap, and Jemma peered up at her girlfriend intently. “The main thing we’re trying to figure out right now is how big the replicated material needs to be. If the molecular structure of the monolith is important then the dimensions might be as well, but your replicator from the Academy would take a long time to create the amount of material we’d need.”

“You have all the measurements?” Jemma confirmed.

“We got them all when the monolith was in the containment unit, yeah. Some fancy scanner Fitz had.” Bobbi sighed. “I just… if I had _known_ …”

“You can’t be upset at yourself for not having ‘portal to an alien planet’ on your list of hypotheses about the monolith,” Jemma chastised gently. “And you certainly can’t be upset that the possibility _Hunter_ was on that alien planet never crossed your mind.”

“I like the way you say his name,” Bobbi murmured, turning her head to nose into Jemma’s hair. “Everyone else says it wrong.”

Jemma froze, not quite sure how she was supposed to respond. She had never heard anyone else say Hunter’s name - obviously, since she hadn’t even known Hunter existed before Maveth - but there was something deep and fluttery in her stomach at the idea of being the one to say his name _right_.

“What I wanted to tell you yesterday,” Bobbi said, voice soft and slow, like she wasn’t sure she was making the right choice in continuing to speak, “is that I think the three of us might work.”

“The three of us?” Jemma repeated.

“I… I hear you talk about Lance, and it reminds me of the way I used to talk about him. And I want you to be able to let yourself fall in love with him, if you’re not already, without worrying about me. But I also want to keep you, and I want what I could’ve had with him, and…”

“And the only ones saying we can’t have that are ourselves,” Jemma finished. She turned the idea around in her head, searching for flaws in the logic and finding none. Polyamory wasn’t uncommon in other biological organisms, and even among humans monogamy had only become the norm when civilization had advanced to a point where it was a sustainable ecological strategy - and humanity’s monogamy was tenuous, at best, given how many people sought extramarital relationships despite the societal stigma against them.

“I know it’s selfish to ask you to do this for me -”

“It’s not,” Jemma interrupted. “You only thought about it because I told you I kissed him, correct?”

Bobbi nodded. 

“Then it’s not selfish. It’s a way for both of us to get what we want.” Jemma was of the opinion that _she_ was the selfish one in this situation, wanting to have the life she left behind at home and the one she had found on Maveth existing side-by-side. “If that’s what he wants, too,” she added lamely. Jemma understood why Bobbi was reluctant to mention the idea before Hunter came back; even if both she and Bobbi wanted him, the idea was useless if he didn’t want them in return.

“He’d be stupid not to want you,” Bobbi whispered, as if she had been reading Jemma’s thoughts. “And he has a thing for pretty scientists.” Bobbi pulled Jemma into her lap and Jemma flipped around so she and Bobbi could still be face to face.

“ _I_ have a thing for pretty scientists.” With or without Hunter, Jemma wanted Bobbi - had always wanted Bobbi.

“Funny, because I do too.” Bobbi smiled before kissing Jemma, mouth warm and insistent. The knot in Jemma’s chest began to loosen, replaced with something suspicious and fluttery that might have been hope.

“I love you,” Jemma murmured against Bobbi’s lips, sliding her hands under the hem of her girlfriend’s shirt.

“Are you ready?” Bobbi asked, clearly aware of the direction Jemma was going. “It’s only been a day, Jem, I don’t want -”

“I’m ready,” Jemma said, voice crisp and clear. She was sure she hadn’t yet discovered the whole toll Maveth had taken on her, but the one thing Jemma was sure of was this. Everything she’d done on Maveth had ultimately been to get back to Bobbi, and she wanted this. She wanted the assurance of skin against skin, of Bobbi pliant under her hands, of loving someone who was there with her. What she had done alone on the planet, hushed and quiet in the night, had stripped her down, and she wanted something - _someone_ \- to build her back up again.

“If you’re sure,” Bobbi breathed.

Jemma’s answer was a kiss hungry enough to eat up all their uncertainty and fears, if only for a little while..

\---

“Jemma!” Bobbi burst into the room, cheeks flushed and goggles still on her face.

Jemma shot to her feet on instinct, then took a deep breath to remind her frantically-beating heart that someone shouting her name wasn’t necessarily a warning, anymore. In fact, with the way Bobbi looked - disheveled but jubilant - Jemma had the impression this was the opposite of a warning.

“I think we’ve figured it out. Come on.” Bobbi offered her hand and Jemma wasted no time in taking it. This was the news she’d been waiting for since Bobbi and Fitz had started their project three days ago. Jemma had decided it was better for her sanity not to be a part of the efforts to replicate the monolith, as much as she wished to the contrary. Helping Bobbi keep positive was a Herculean enough effort without adding in her own scientific worries and fears. Jemma had never thought she’d meet someone who she loved more than science, but Bobbi Morse was unexpected in just about every way, so she shouldn’t be surprised.

When Fitz and Bobbi had successfully replicated the first shard of the monolith they’d moved their base of operations into the containment chamber. Jemma hadn’t even allowed herself to ask how they had solved the problem of the replicator’s size restriction, and honestly, right now she didn’t care. She just wanted to see Hunter.

Today was the day they were supposed to go back home through the old portal. Jemma worried her lip between her teeth; she didn’t know if the replicated portal would work, and if it did, where it would let her out on Maveth, but she didn’t want Hunter standing, exposed, in the middle of the No Fly Zone for nothing. To have him taken by It when he was within her reach… there would be no greater indignity. 

When they reached the monolith containment room, it was abuzz with activity. Jemma stepped closer into Bobbi’s side, resisting the urge to screw her eyes shut. Large groups of people were still overwhelming to her senses, especially large groups all moving around like this, but she couldn’t leave now.

“I’m going through,” Bobbi said quietly, wrapping her arm around Jemma’s shoulders like an anchor. Jemma leaned into Bobbi, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Do you want to come with me?”

Jemma nodded slowly. No matter what happened, she wanted all three of them to be on the same side of the portal. If it shut when she was still on Maveth, she would be okay so long as Bobbi and Hunter were there. 

“Suit up, then,” Bobbi said, pointing to a pile of astronaut-esque suits in the corner.

“I don’t need a suit,” Jemma protested. She had spent months on Maveth and it hadn’t done anything horrible to her; wearing one now would just slow her down.

“Honey,” Bobbi said, voice brokering no argument. “Your body is already confused enough right now. Just wear the suit.”

“Where did we even get spacesuits?” Jemma asked, shuffling past a group of people she vaguely registered as lab techs.

“We ordered them when we first got our lead about Maveth being a different planet,” Bobbi explained, gently extricating her hand from Jemma’s so they could both begin putting on the spacesuits. “Just in case we needed them.”

“You know, if you had needed spacesuits -” _you would have been picking up a body, not a person._

“I know,” Bobbi interrupted. “But I didn’t want to think about that.”

The suits were surprisingly easy to put on, and Jemma turned around so Bobbi could zip hers up. 

“Do I need to put on the helmet?” Jemma groused.

“Yes,” Bobbi said, smoothing Jemma’s hair back fondly. “Wouldn’t want you to ruin your eyes in a sandstorm.”

Bobbi donned her own helmet, and Jemma sighed before putting hers on as well. They shuffled over to where the new, replicated monolith was sitting in a glass box. It looked like it was a scaled model, about a third of the size of the original. Daisy stood by it, arms crossed over her chest, and Lincoln hovered protectively behind her. 

“You’d better hurry up,” Daisy said, “or A.C. is gonna figure out real soon that this isn’t just a maintenance check.”

“In and out,” Bobbi promised. “Fire her up.”

Daisy began quaking the monolith, and for a long moment nothing happened. Then, just like its predecessor, it dissolved into a pool of sludgy gray liquid. 

“Close it when we’re through, then give us three minutes. We’ll be back by then,” Bobbi said, voice oozing authority. How she could be so sure of when they’d return, Jemma didn’t know.

Bobbi didn’t hesitate before stepping into the sludge of the monolith and vanishing, and it was enough to put a smile on Jemma’s face. If Bobbi could be certain, then so could she.

The second time she was spat out onto Maveth was nothing like the first. For one thing, the suit seemed to be doing an admirable job of keeping her from feeling the effects of the extra gravity. For another, this time Jemma knew what to expect - the filtered blue light, the sand kicking up everywhere, the disorientation of not knowing which way was up. She glanced over at where Bobbi was standing, just a few feet away, but reading how she was feeling was impossible with the helmets obscuring their faces.

“This way,” Jemma said, gesturing with her hand towards the compound and wincing at the way her own voice echoed back at her in the helmet.

“No need for that, love.”

She turned around to see none other than Lance Hunter in all his glory, covered from head-to-toe in cloth to hold out the sand and with a large pack on his back. Jemma took a deep breath, trying to tamp down the rush of emotions flooding her chest and failing miserably. Hunter was still okay; she could see that much even through the foggy glass of the stupid helmet. He didn’t seem much interested in her, though, and it didn’t take a genius to realize why. Apparently he could still recognize Bobbi even through a spacesuit.

The woman in question was frozen in place, the set of her shoulders stiff and her knees locked. Hunter didn’t move towards her, just stared. Jemma watched him watch her, and the tidal wave between her ribs threatened to overwhelm her. Three years and God knew how many lightyears and they were back together again - but they wouldn’t do anything but look at each other.

Suddenly the portal sprang open with a thunderous sound like waves crashing against the shoreline. Jemma frowned - that didn’t seem like three minutes had passed - but she wasn’t going to risk her chance to get back home. She ushered Bobbi through first, then Hunter, before stepping through herself.

Once she was back on earth, it took Jemma all of ten seconds to realize why Daisy had opened the portal early. Coulson was standing in the doorway, blue eyes steely. 

Jemma lifted her helmet off her head, tucking it under her arm. “We can explain, sir.”

“I should hope so, Dr. Simmons,” Coulson said. “Who is this?”

“This is Lance Hunter, sir,” Bobbi said, shaking her hair out when she got her helmet off. “He’s my husband.”


	8. Chapter 8

The entire room went silent in the wake of Bobbi’s announcement - it seemed like no one was even daring to breathe as they watched Coulson and Bobbi meet each other’s eyes. 

“Your who?” Coulson asked, cracking open the silence with two sharp words.

“My husband,” Bobbi repeated.

Coulson looked to Jemma then, and she took a deep breath, refusing to cower under his gaze. She knew it wasn’t meant to be intimidating - it was far more likely Coulson was trying to ascertain how she felt about the situation, given he knew the relationship between herself and Bobbi - but Jemma didn’t particularly like that his first reaction was to look at her.

“Lieutenant Lance Hunter, with the SAS. My ID is -” Hunter said, stepping forward.

“I don’t need to know that,” Coulson sighed. “Dr. Campbell, would you mind?”

Lincoln looked to Daisy, who nodded at him; she still had an unhealthy pallor about her, but Daisy seemed far more concerned with the drama unfolding in front of her eyes than she was with her own state. From what Bobbi had told Jemma, Daisy was still learning the limits of her powers and there was more than one time she had pushed herself too far, so it made sense a routine problem wasn’t as interesting as a brand new one.

Lincoln crossed to the entrance of the monolith’s room and beckoned Hunter along with him. Bobbi followed, and Jemma made to do the same before she was stopped by Coulson.

“You knew about this?” he asked. He had lost some of the steel in his voice, his paternal side slipping through instead.

“I did.”

“Why didn’t you ask me before taking action?”

“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d prefer we save the interrogation for after when I know Hunter is alright.”

Coulson paused for much longer than Jemma was comfortable with before nodding. Jemma jogged down the hallway to catch up with Lincoln, Bobbi, and Hunter before they let themselves into one of the examination rooms in the medical bay. Hunter dropped his pack onto the floor near the door and stripped off the bandanas covering his head and mouth, revealing his whole face for the first time.

“What did he -?” Bobbi began asking under her breath.

“Later,” Jemma whispered back. 

“Before we begin, I’d like to double-check that you’re okay with them being here?” Lincoln asked, gesturing towards Jemma and Bobbi. 

“Yes. I’d prefer if they stayed,” Hunter replied, voice even. Jemma flashed him a smile, and got a weak one in return. His eyes kept flicking around the examination room, and Jemma’s heart tugged. It had only been a few days since she was in the same position, and the memory of how overwhelming it all had been was still crisp and clear in her brain. 

Lincoln introduced himself officially before moving through his list of questions - everything from Hunter’s health before going to Maveth to his time on the alien planet and what he had done to survive there. Most of what Hunter shared Jemma already knew, but the line of Bobbi’s jaw became harder as she clenched her jaw tighter with each new revelation. Jemma reached for Bobbi’s hand, squeezing it gently. The horrors of Maveth would never leave Hunter - would never leave _Jemma_ \- but they were home now.

Speaking of horrors… Jemma waited for a lull in the conversation between doctor and patient before directing her attention to Hunter. “There was something you were supposed to tell me. Do you remember?”

“Christ, Jem, it’s only been a few days. I’m not _that_ wonky in the head.” Hunter smiled again, a real smile, and Jemma watched the muscle in Bobbi’s jaw relax somewhat. “I’ll give you the sun, Jemma.”

She couldn’t tell if Hunter was simply recounting the code phrase they had devised or making her a promise, and Jemma’s stomach flipped. She had the sudden, inexplicable urge to reach out to Hunter, and in that moment it hit Jemma: she hadn’t touched him. He hadn’t touched her, or Bobbi, or anyone. _Lincoln_ had been the first person to touch Lance Hunter upon his return to earth and that felt so horribly _wrong_ and Jemma wanted to fix it, now.

Jemma unwound her hand from Bobbi’s, giving her girlfriend a questioning look. Bobbi tilted her chin forehead, and Jemma considered that her blessing. She approached the exam table slowly, giving Hunter ample time to tell her to back off, but he didn’t. When she reached for his hand, he reached back, their fingers curling together between them. 

“Do you want to stay with us?” she asked quietly. Jemma wasn’t under any illusion that Lincoln couldn’t hear them, not when he was only a few feet away, but she didn’t want to overwhelm Hunter by being any louder than she needed to be - and besides, even if the conversation wasn’t private, it was nice to pretend it was.

Hunter’s throat bobbed when he swallowed, but after a moment he nodded.

“I’m done with him, if you three want to go,” Lincoln offered.

Once again Jemma looked to Bobbi first, then to Hunter. They both were avoiding meeting each other’s eyes now, and Jemma suppressed a sigh. Hopefully things would be easier when it was the three of them alone together and they didn’t have to worry about what they looked like from the outside. Jemma tugged on Hunter’s hand to get him moving, and they left the examination room hand-in-hand.

The three of them got more than one strange glance when they walked through the base, Hunter clutching Jemma’s hand tighter with each unfamiliar person who passed. Jemma tried to exude calm, but it was difficult when her own anxiety was mounting. Only Bobbi, walking behind them, was good at pretending she was genuinely unfazed.

Jemma had never been happier to have the door to her bunk swing shut behind her.

“Can I shower?” Hunter asked almost immediately, eyeing the ajar door to the bathroom.

“Knock yourself out,” Bobbi answered. “There’s a spare toothbrush under the sink, too, if you want it.”

“Thanks,” Hunter murmured. He ducked into the bathroom without looking back, shutting the door resolutely behind him.

“Bobbi -”

“I’m fine.” Bobbi’s voice shook, betraying just how un-fine she was.

Jemma sighed. “Please don’t lie to me.”

“I - he’s _alive_ , Jemma,” Bobbi said, voice cracking. “I know you told me he was and I don’t think you’d ever lie to me, least of all about something like this but - he’s alive. Hunter is alive, and he’s here, and -” Tears began dripping down Bobbi’s cheeks and she made no effort to wipe them away. Jemma opened her arms, enveloping Bobbi in a tight hug. Bobbi hooked her head over Jemma’s shoulder, clutching so tightly onto her that Jemma thought she was going to end up with bruises. Bobbi took another shuddering breath. “I don’t know what to do now,” she admitted.

“I don’t think any of us do.” This was entirely uncharted territory for all of them, and Jemma suspected unwillingness to make the first move was why they all felt so _stuck_. Even reaching for Hunter’s hand had felt like too much, and that was just holding hands - something that could be entirely platonic, if they wanted it to be. (Jemma didn’t want it to be, but she still had no clue of where Hunter’s head was at.)

“I just want to skip to the part where we have this figured out,” Bobbi breathed into Jemma’s hair. “I want us to be happy.”

“We’re going to be,” Jemma said. She meant it, too - she couldn’t see how they could all have everything they wanted right within reach and then muck it up just because they weren’t willing to take a chance.

Jemma squeezed Bobbi tighter before releasing her. “I’m going to go get some clothes for Hunter. You stay here.” Even if he did have clothes in his rucksack Jemma doubted Hunter wanted to be wearing them when there was fresh clothing available.

“But -”

“You need to talk to him,” Jemma told her girlfriend firmly. “And I don’t think I need to be here for all of it.” She wanted Hunter and Bobbi to have the opportunity to sort themselves out without worrying about what she was thinking. They would have time to talk with all three of them, too, but maybe it would be easier if they started with a one-on-one conversation.

“I love you,” Bobbi whispered.

“And nothing you say to Hunter will make you love me less,” Jemma asserted. “It’s okay to be scared, Bobbi. But we deserve this.” _You deserve this,_ Jemma wanted to say, but didn’t. After having both the people she loved torn away from her, Bobbi deserved to have both of them if she wanted.

Bobbi pulled Jemma in for one last kiss, her lips warm but trembling. Jemma hesitated, but ultimately decided leaving the bedroom would be for the best. Hunter did still need clothes after all, and space might help them all sort out their feelings.

Jemma took her time in the supply closet, trying not to blush as she picked out boxers for Hunter, and then a few S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue outfits. She wasn’t sure what size to get; Hunter looked like he would wear a medium, but on Maveth he’d had a tendency to wear clothing that was slightly too tight for him. Jemma had never questioned before whether that was because of preference or necessity, so she took several sets of both sizes just to be safe.

When she ducked out of the supply closet again, arms full of clothing, Jemma found herself face-to-face with Fitz.

“Coulson’s not happy.”

“I didn’t expect him to be,” she answered. “But it was necessary.”

“You didn’t tell me he was Bobbi’s husband,” Fitz said, accusation edging his voice.

“It wasn’t relevant.” Jemma curled her fingers tighter into the fabric she was holding. “I would’ve wanted to bring him back either way.” 

“Simmons…”

“Fitz,” she said gently, wishing for a moment her arms were empty so she could reach out and lay a hand on his arm. “You have to trust that I know what I’m doing. You still trust me, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Fitz sputtered.

“Then trust me when I tell you Hunter mattered to me even before I knew who he was to Bobbi.” She swallowed hard. “And I know you must have a million more questions, but I really need to get back to them.” Even if she wanted to give Bobbi and Hunter time to be on their own, there was an itch in her chest from being apart from them for too long.

“Just be careful, Jemma,” Fitz said. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“They’re the last people in the world who would want to hurt me.” Jemma knew that the way she knew the sun would rise every morning on earth; Bobbi had been willing to give up her _husband_ so she wouldn’t have to break up with Jemma, and Hunter had kept her safe for all her months on an alien planet for no reason other than that he was kind and he wanted to; they both cared about her more than Jemma had ever imagined someone caring.

“After me.” Well, someone other than Fitz. He had helped her cross the universe just because she asked, and Jemma couldn’t imagine a greater love than that. 

“After you,” Jemma agreed with a fond smile. Maybe Fitz was more protective of her than Bobbi or Hunter, but if he was, it was just by a hair - and neither of them had to know she admitted that.

“Alright,” Fitz sighed. “But I want an explanation later.”

“You’ll get one,” Jemma promised. She kissed Fitz gently on the cheek before brushing past him so she could return to her bunk.

When she opened the door she found Bobbi sitting on the edge of the bed, Hunter beside her. His hands were both cradling hers, and the intimacy of the moment gave Jemma more pause than the fact Hunter was only wearing a towel slung low around his hips. 

They both looked up when she entered, and Hunter gave her a soft smile when their eyes met. “Hi.”

“Hello.” Jemma stopped just short of the foot of the bed and stuck her arms out so he could take the pile of clothing. “For you. I wasn’t sure what size you preferred so I got both my guesses.”

“Whichever is fine,” Hunter said, letting go of Bobbi’s hand to accept the clothing. “Thank you.”

“It was nothing,” Jemma demurred.

“I’m serious, Jem.” Hunter stood up and moved closer to her - close enough that if it were hardly anyone else Jemma would take a step back to get them out of her space. “Thank you. For everything.”

Then he was kissing her. Jemma’s brain, for perhaps the first time in her life, went totally and completely blank. Her hands didn’t know what to do, until by instinct they wrapped around the back of his neck. His hair was still dripping water, making his skin cool and slick under her fingers, but she wasn’t focusing on that - Jemma was focusing on Hunter’s mouth, savoring every detail she hadn't been able to process during their kiss on Maveth. He tasted like mint toothpaste and the vanilla lip balm Bobbi always used, and a flare ignited in Jemma’s chest. If kissing Hunter was a mistake, it was a mistake she was glad she’d made twice.

“You talked to Bobbi,” Jemma said breathlessly when they broke apart.

“Yeah, I did,” Hunter laughed, his breath sending goosebumps rippling across her skin. “Sorry. I meant to tell you something proper but then you just - took me by surprise, I guess.”

“She has a habit of doing that,” Bobbi said from the bed. Jemma turned to look at her girlfriend, cheeks warming when she saw the sly look on Bobbi’s face.

“I do not!” Jemma protested.

“Oh, love, you’re the best kind of surprise.” Hunter bumped his forehead against hers gently. “And for what it’s worth, you look fetching not covered in sand.”

“I could say the same of you.” Jemma allowed her eyes to meet Hunter’s again. The threads of gold and green in his eyes looked even more spectacular under the lights of their bunk, and Jemma couldn’t fathom there had been a time where this was a pipe dream. “Though I still _feel_ like I’m covered in sand.”

“Me too,” Hunter said, cracking a smile. “How long do you reckon that’ll last?”

“Not long, I hope,” Jemma huffed. “I already made Bobbi wash the sheets twice. She might kill me if I ask her to do it again.”

“I would not,” Bobbi interjected. “And you two aren’t allowed to gang up on me.”

“What’s that, Bob? You said you’ve seen the light and will be calling football by its proper name?” Hunter said. He stepped back from Jemma and dropped the pile of clothes on the floor in favor of tackling Bobbi and pinning her against the bed. “You said you’re going to start writing the date the proper way? And spelling everything with an extra u?” He began pressing kisses into Bobbi’s neck while Bobbi let out peals of bright laughter like nothing Jemma had heard before. The hesitation of just ten minutes ago seemed to have been forgotten, and everything was slotting itself into place; Bobbi was smiling and Hunter was smiling and _Jemma_ was smiling too, so hard her cheeks ached.

“And measuring things in the system that actually makes sense?” Jemma added, sitting herself on the bed next to Bobbi and Hunter.

“Oh, that’s a good one, Jem.” Hunter gave Bobbi one last sloppy neck kiss before releasing her and propping himself up to standing. “You keep her humble while I get changed, yeah?”

“Hold on,” Jemma said, beckoning him over to her side of the bed. Hunter did as he was told, brow furrowing in confusion.

“I just wanted to touch this,” Jemma said, fingertips tracing the outline of his SAS tattoo. 

“Been thinking about it a while, have you?” Hunter teased.

“Longer than I’d like to admit.” Jemma’s ears burned but Hunter made flirting so _easy_ , especially when Bobbi was right there and obviously pleased with getting to watch them flirt. 

“Well you can touch it as often as you’d like,” Hunter declared, swooping into give Jemma another kiss. “But I can’t walk around naked forever -”

“You can,” Bobbi interrupted. 

“He can’t,” Jemma argued. “He has to leave the room eventually.”

“That’s what you think.”

“It’s true!”

Bobbi sighed. “It is. But I can pretend.”

Her faux pout earned her another quick kiss from Hunter before he finally extricated himself to return to the bathroom. Jemma crawled over to Bobbi, sprawling herself on the bedspread beside her girlfriend and interlacing their fingers on top of Bobbi’s stomach.

“He wants it, too?”

“No, Jemma, he kissed you because he thinks the three of us being together is a horrible idea,” Bobbi drawled. “Yeah. Yeah, he wants it.”

“And you two…?” Jemma asked carefully.

“We’re going to take some time to figure things out. Legally there’s some hoops we need to jump through either way since he was presumed dead, but while we’re working on that, we can also work on… us. And of course if it ends up we’re still married in the eyes of the law we’ll talk to you but… I like this plan.”

“I like it too,” Jemma said with a small smile. “Your husband is a really good kisser.”

“He is,” Bobbi sighed dreamily. “But so is my girlfriend.”

“Is she?”

“She is,” Bobbi said, rolling over so she was on top of Jemma. “And she’s also smart -” a kiss on Jemma’s forehead - “and resourceful -” a kiss on her right cheek - “and kind -” a kiss on her left cheek - “and stubborn -” a kiss on the tip of her nose - “and all-around amazing.” Bobbi finished with a resounding kiss to Jemma’s lips.

“And my life would not be the same without her,” Bobbi murmured against Jemma’s mouth. “Thank you.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Jemma whispered back. “My life wouldn’t be the same without you, either.” HYDRA would’ve been so much scarier if she’d had to do it all alone, and if she was on Maveth with no reason to fight to go home… Jemma wasn’t sure where she would’ve ended up. For all of the times Jemma had thought of Bobbi as her light, her sun - it seemed just as clear that her girlfriend was her northern star, the person guiding her even when the night was dark. _Especially_ when the night was dark. Finding where Hunter fit into that wouldn’t be easy. Jemma knew she cared for him, knew she liked having him close… but was he just another person following the same star?

 _Don’t think too hard,_ Jemma scolded herself gently. She could appreciate everything Bobbi had done for her and everything she loved about her girlfriend without making herself worry about the fate of her relationship with Hunter. Like Bobbi said, they were all working on _us_ \- both as individual couples and as the three of them together.

“I hate to be a downer,” Hunter said when he came out of the bathroom fully-dressed. “But I’m knackered. Any chance I could persuade you ladies into a nap?”

“Yes,” Jemma answered immediately. Her habit of taking long naps hadn’t gotten any better in the days since her return from Maveth, but she wasn’t going to deny her body the chance to rest and repair after months of endless anxiety. She could only imagine Hunter needed the same kind of rest. 

Bobbi nodded too, rolling off Jemma so she could flip off the light switch. Jemma took the opportunity to shuffle under the covers, lifting them up for Hunter to join her. She pillowed her head against his shoulder, acknowledging the strangeness of cuddling up next to someone who wasn’t Bobbi but refusing to overanalyze it. She was tired, he was tired, and Bobbi would be more than happy to watch them sleep together, even if it did look like she was going to join them.

To Jemma’s surprise, rather than slotting herself in on Hunter’s other side, Bobbi laid down opposite him, sandwiching Jemma in between two warm, strong bodies. Well. It wasn’t like she could say _no_ to that.

“I need to talk to Coulson,” Jemma sighed into the darkness.

“No, love.” Hunter’s hand on her shoulder tightened. “You need to sleep.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Jemma.” Someone shook at her shoulder and Jemma made a displeased noise, burying herself further into her pillow. She had just been having an amazing dream where -

“Wake up, love.”

Not a dream. _Not a dream_. Jemma uncurled herself slowly, rolling towards the other source of body heat in the bed who she assumed was Hunter. There was only one dip in the bed, which meant Bobbi probably wasn’t around, and Jemma suppressed a whine. Just once she wanted to wake up with both of them nearby. Just once. (Or twice. Or maybe a few dozen times, but that was only because every experiment needed a statistically significant amount of data points, and she was experimenting with whether or not it always felt amazing to wake up in the arms of the people she cared for. It was a new experiment - one she had just decided to run, in fact.)

“Were you always this much of a sleepyhead?” Hunter asked, smiling when she blinked blearily up at him.

“It’s a recent thing,” she admitted. “Since getting back.”

“Can’t blame you,” Hunter said. He hesitated before reaching his hand out, brushing his thumb across her cheek. “Eyelash,” he explained softly.

“Right.” Jemma exhaled slowly before tipping her face forward just enough that her lips brushed over Hunter’s. “We’re allowed to do that now, aren’t we?” she asked into the infinitesimal space between them.

“I think so.” He skimmed his mouth over hers, nothing like the confident kiss he had given her the day before. It felt different without Bobbi there, like they were doing something forbidden.

“We should really talk,” Jemma said with a sigh. “The three of us. Together.” Jemma _thought_ they were all on the same page about where they were and where they were going, but she had also learned through years of scientific investigations that one faulty assumption could make the world crumble.

“We should,” Hunter agreed. He leaned his forehead into hers and Jemma breathed in. It was strange to know this was _Hunter_ but not to have any of the sensory feedback she associated with him - the rough cloth of their uniforms on Maveth, the sting of sand in her eyes, the dank mustiness of their underground home together. It only made it harder for her brain to wrap around the idea that he was still here with her, and they were both safe. 

The door to the bedroom opened and Jemma found herself rather proud that she didn’t spring back like she had been caught doing something uncouth; instead she took another steadying breath before looking up at Bobbi.

“Breakfast in bed?” Jemma asked, noting the tray Bobbi was holding, piled high with various breakfast foods.

“Consider it a belated homecoming celebration,” Bobbi said. Jemma and Hunter both shuffled to sitting, punching the pillows into place so they’d have something to lean against.

“You hate breakfast in bed,” Jemma said suspiciously when Bobbi set the tray on her lap and climbed into bed beside her.

“It’s Hunter’s favorite thing,” Bobbi answered with a long-suffering sigh. Her eyes were sparkling, though, and Jemma wished she could capture this moment and keep it in a jar. Bobbi was smiling, they were together, the bed was warm… Jemma couldn’t ask for much more.

“I didn’t know that,” Jemma said, picking a strip of bacon off the plate delicately. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest choice, but after eating rations for months and months she still savored eating real meat - greasy, salty, perfectly-cooked meat. Fresh fruit was also a recent favorite of hers, and she eyed the orange sitting on the corner of the plate longingly. One thing at a time, though.

“We couldn’t exactly have a full English on Maveth, could we?” Hunter asked, snagging a slice of toast. “Besides, I don’t think you’d have liked it if I broke into your room.”

Jemma flushed, and Hunter stopped mid-chew. “Jemma!” he exclaimed, scandalized.

“It’s not my fault you’re attractive!” Jemma spluttered.

“You had a girlfriend!”

“Which is why I only kissed you once,” Jemma said, grabbing the orange and beginning to peel it. She needed something to do with her hands so she wouldn’t combust, and maybe eating some fruit would cancel out the fattiness of the bacon.

“Now you can kiss him as many times as you want,” Bobbi said, running her hand through Jemma’s hair. 

“Can I?” Jemma asked, digging her thumbnail into the orange peel in a vain attempt to puncture it. 

“What do you mean?” Bobbi asked, fingers still tangled in Jemma’s hair.

“I mean, I want us to be clear about where we stand,” Jemma said. “I love you, and I want to love him, and I want a future for the three of us.”

“Have I said anything that made you think that’s not what I want, too?” Bobbi asked quietly. “Because that is exactly what I want. I want to love you and I want to love Lance and I want you two to love each other and I want to never, ever have to think about that stupid planet again.”

“You don’t have to,” Jemma promised quietly, pecking Bobbi on the lips and ignoring the tears prickling in the backs of her eyes. She dropped the orange back on the plate so she could cup Bobbi’s cheek in her hand, kissing her again. “We’re home now.”

“And if you think you’re getting rid of us again that easy, you have another thing coming,” Hunter declared. “I think one monolith kidnapping us to an alien planet is more than enough for a lifetime. What do you think, Jem?”

“More than enough,” she agreed, turning to Hunter. “What about you?”

“I’m not going to say anything to make my girls sad,” Hunter said, taking the orange and continuing to peel it where Jemma had stopped. “Honestly, this might still be a dream. But if it is, I don’t want to wake up.”

“It’s not a dream.” Bobbi said, reaching over Jemma to squeeze Hunter’s shoulder. 

“Too bad,” Hunter said with a sigh, handing the peeled half of the orange to Jemma while he continued peeling the other half. “If it was then you’d be getting naked in about five minutes.”

“Hunter!”

“Barbara, it’s been years since I had a proper shag. Forgive a poor man.”

“She forgives you,” Jemma interrupted in between eating slices of her orange. “And I’m sure we can make arrangements to remedy that situation.”

“I love it when you use big words,” Hunter murmured, nuzzling into her neck.

“You smell like oranges,” Jemma murmured, reveling in the scrape of stubble against the sensitive skin of her throat.

“Whose fault is that?”

“Mine.” Jemma popped another slice of orange into her mouth, letting the flavor wash over her as she took another deep breath in.

Maybe Hunter didn’t have to smell like underground tunnels and feel like sand chafing at her skin and sound like howling wind. Maybe he could smell like oranges and feel like warm hands on her knees and sound like Bobbi’s laughter.

That would be nice.

\---

“Dr. Simmons,” Coulson said, leaning back in his office chair, “I think maybe now would be a good time to give me some answers.”

Jemma, oddly, didn’t feel nervous despite the look Coulson was giving her. A year ago or two ago if she had been in this same position she would’ve been practically shaking with anxiety - but that was before HYDRA and Maveth. Before she had gone through a fire and come out the other side, with not only herself intact but also with the people she loved at her side.

“I told you that I wasn’t alone on Maveth, sir. And I wasn’t going to let Hunter live the rest of his life alone if I could help it.”

“I’m going to ask you the same question I did when I discovered your… plan. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Jemma answered crisply. “I didn’t know how much time or how many resources it would take to get Hunter back and you have other priorities with your Inhuman problem, so if I asked other agents to help as a personal favor to me instead of within the system, I could get everything done much more quickly.”

“If I had known it was going to take less than a week I would’ve approved it,” Coulson said.

“But we didn’t know it was going to take less than a week.” They had been beyond lucky that her and Fitz’s abandoned thesis project had an alternate use, and that the monolith they had created worked despite its smaller scale. So many things could’ve gone wrong, but didn’t. Coulson couldn’t bet on that, though, because often in their line of work, everything that could go wrong did. Jemma didn’t fault him for being cautious when he was responsible for so many people - but that didn’t mean she had to agree with him. 

“There was a lot about this mission you didn’t know, Simmons,” Coulson sighed. “You put a lot of good agents in danger, yourself included.” He paused, drumming his fingers against the desk. “We could have lost you again.”

“With all due respect, sir, I would’ve rather spent the rest of my life stuck on Maveth than be here on earth knowing I could’ve helped Hunter but didn’t even try.”

“I understand that.” Coulson sighed again, deeper. “But you’ve put me in a difficult position here.”

“I’ll accept whatever punishment you have for me,” Jemma said, squaring her shoulders. “As long as no one else is penalized for my mistakes.”

“Mistakes?”

“Transgressions,” Jemma corrected. What she had done wasn’t a mistake. Bringing Hunter back would never be a mistake.

“Dr. Campbell has assured me that physically you’re fit to return to field work. The results from your X-rays were clear so you’re fine on that front, but I’ve scheduled an appointment for you with Dr. Garner to ensure you’re mentally fit as well.”

Jemma blinked, unsure why he had changed the subject when they were just talking about her being reprimanded.

“Even if you are fit to return to the field, I’m taking you off active field duty for the foreseeable future. You’ll remain in the lab until further notice.”

Jemma blinked. That was her punishment? She supposed the woman she had been before going to Maveth would’ve been a little stung at the apparent lack of trust, but the woman she was now couldn’t help but feel a bit… relieved? She had spent the past months fighting for her life, and she didn’t want to fight anything else for a long while. And of course there was the matter of Bobbi and her rehabilitation - Jemma hadn’t asked whether or not her girlfriend had been cleared for field work, because it was the least of her concerns when it came to their reunion, but if Bobbi also wasn’t in the field, being in the lab wouldn’t be all that bad.

“I also wanted to ask you about Hunter, sir.”

“What about him?” 

“He would make a good agent. He has military training and survival skills, and he obviously knows about S.H.I.E.L.D. already because of his relationship to Bobbi. I think he would be a valuable addition to the team.” Especially given the lack of field-ready agents they had at the moment, having someone who was already trained would be a boon.

“You want me to give your girlfriend’s ex-husband a job?” Coulson asked, eyebrows shooting to his receding hairline.

“Not ex-husband,” Jemma corrected. “I believe they’re trying to have their marriage reinstated, seeing as Hunter is not actually dead.” It was a bit of a legal mess they were all trying to figure out together.

Coulson held her gaze for a moment, and Jemma could see the moment he made the decision not to question the personal relationships of his agents any further. “I’ll speak with him later about getting his clearance, then.”

Jemma nodded. At least Hunter’s method of arrival wouldn’t recuse him from being able to participate in S.H.I.E.L.D. She hadn’t explicitly asked Hunter if joining S.H.I.E.L.D. was what he wanted, but their conversation that morning had made it obvious that he wanted to stay with her and Bobbi. Joining S.H.I.E.L.D. officially would let him do that - and they were still hurting for personnel, if Jemma’s time since her return had taught her anything. Even with how overwhelming she found large groups of people, there was still a leanness to the staff on the base that there hadn’t been before the HYDRA uprising.

“If you don’t have anything else, Dr. Simmons, I have another appointment to get to,” Coulson said, standing. Jemma stood as well - the meeting hadn’t gone as poorly as she had feared and she had plans for the rest of the afternoon. The plans were rather loose and involved a great deal of cuddling with Bobbi and Hunter, but they were plans nonetheless.

They exited Coulson’s office and Jemma’s shoulders sagged slightly. Yes, some cuddles would do her good.

\---

“I don’t see why this is necessary,” Jemma huffed. When she had been thinking about cuddles, she had imagined the privacy of their bedroom, not the common room couch.

“Because you and Hunter need to get used to being around people again in low-stress situations,” Bobbi answered.

“She wants things to go back to normal,” Hunter said into Jemma’s ear, low enough to keep Bobbi from hearing. “Let’s give her this one, yeah?”

Jemma sighed but acquiesced, leaning further into him as they continued walking through the corridor. The hesitance of the morning evaporated sometime during breakfast, and now Jemma felt safe in saying she was addicted to touching Hunter. He was solid and safe and seemed to enjoy doting on her as much as she enjoyed being doted on, so it was a winning situation all around.

It hadn’t been lost on Jemma that Bobbi tried to keep both her and Hunter in her line of sight whenever possible. When Jemma had returned from her meeting with Coulson, Bobbi had hugged her briefly but tightly, and Jemma had let her.

Her own wounds from Maveth were easy to remember, and so were Hunter’s. Bobbi’s were harder, because how could someone heal from the _absence_ of something? Jemma and Hunter couldn’t stay in the same room as Bobbi forever, and when they left, it was like they were on an alien planet all over again.

They all had so much healing to do. When Jemma thought about it too hard it seemed exhausting, so instead she thought about the single step in front of her: sit in the common room with Bobbi and Hunter until dinnertime. 

“We could play a game,” Bobbi suggested, poking at the dusty pile of board games beneath the television.

“I’d rather just talk,” Jemma said, collapsing onto the couch with Hunter beside her. She adjusted her position until he was curled against him, her head on his shoulder. Not the ideal cuddle, with her head against his chest, but a decent position nonetheless.

“She doesn’t want to lose,” Hunter corrected. “We didn’t play any board games on Maveth, Jem’s rusty.”

“We should’ve done that,” Jemma mused. They had spent most of their free time on Maveth exploring or just sitting still. Of course Jemma had had her calculations to keep her busy, but that wasn’t something she had been able to do eight hours a day. Things had been boring, and she couldn’t believe they hadn’t considered trying to fashion a board game out of the supplies they had.

“You’d have beat me,” Hunter murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I’m not good at losing for weeks on end.”

“I’d have let you win occasionally,” Jemma teased.

“Thank you, oh benevolent Simmons,” Hunter laughed in reply. He paused, brow furrowing as if he had just remembered something. “I brought your journals back, if you want them. They’re most of what’s in the pack.”

Jemma had actually forgotten about Hunter’s backpack, sitting in the corner of their bedroom, still covered in Maveth’s dust. She hadn’t understood why he’d wanted to bring any part of that hellish planet back with him, but now that she knew it was to preserve all of the work she’d done, she was touched. 

“What’s the rest?”

“Samples.” Hunter shrugged, and Bobbi took the opportunity of his shoulder lifting to tuck herself into his other side. “I know how crazy you scientists are. I couldn’t make them sterile or anything but I hope you can still… analyze samples or whatever it is you lot do.”

“We do more than analyze samples,” Jemma said with a sigh. “We -”

“Honey,” Bobbi interrupted. “I don’t think Hunter cares.”

“I care! I just am not smart enough to understand any of it.”

“You’re plenty smart,” Jemma assured him, twining her fingers through his. “You picked me and Bobbi after all.”

“Having superb taste in women is one of my finer points, yes,” Hunter laughed. “And that’s really all I need when my girls can come rescue me whenever I get myself into trouble.”

“Having girlfriends who will bail you out isn’t an excuse to go running into trouble, mister!” 

“Christ, Bob, I’m not going to!” Hunter turned away from Jemma so he could kiss the crown of Bobbi’s head. “You remember what you told me before I left on my mission?”

“Yeah.” Bobbi’s face fell. “Don’t die out there.”

“And I didn’t, did I?”

“You didn’t.” Even though she acknowledged the truth of the situation, Bobbi didn’t look any happier. Hunter used the hand not holding onto Jemma’s to tip her chin up, placing a kiss on her lips.

“I don’t plan to anytime soon, either.”

“I should hope none of us are planning on dying. Or going undercover in a neo-fascist organization. Or getting swallowed by a space rock. Or seeking out any other dangerous and improbable situation,” Jemma declared.

“Who knows,” Bobbi said. “We do work for S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“We can be happy while working for S.H.I.E.L.D.” Jemma was sure of that, at least - they didn’t have to leave their friends and the family they’d found to find peace. They just had to make a peace of their own.

Sitting on the sofa, there with the people she loved, that didn’t seem difficult at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last "official" chapter of the fic - look out for an epilogue next week. :)


	10. Chapter 10

_One year later_

Jemma bounced on the balls of her feet, waiting impatiently for Hunter and Bobbi to get out of the car. A seagull swooped low, cawing loudly at the circle of beach-goers just a few feet away. They were holding a carton of French fries that the gull apparently wanted them to share, and it was being very insistent about that fact.

“Barbara, I love you, but I don’t need more sunscreen,” Hunter huffed, ducking behind Jemma to put her in between him and his wife, easily pulling Jemma’s attention away from the intrepid bird. Her partners were much more interesting than local fauna.

“I want you to remember this moment when you burn,” Bobbi said warningly. “And don’t expect any sympathy from me.”

“Jemma will feel bad for me, won’t you, Jem?” Hunter asked, sliding his arms around Jemma’s waist. He had already abandoned his shirt in the car and his skin soft against her bare midriff and back. How they had convinced her to wear a bikini to the beach was beyond Jemma - but Hunter and Bobbi were persistent to the nth degree and had more than one unique persuasion strategy in their arsenal.

“It depends on how much you complain,” Jemma said, flashing Bobbi a mischievous smile. Riling Hunter up was one of their favorite pastimes. 

“You’re the worst,” Hunter huffed, his breath raising goosebumps on Jemma’s skin despite the heat of the afternoon sun on her face. 

“You love me.” Jemma reached for Hunter’s hand, running her thumb along the gold band on his ring finger. He and Bobbi had started wearing their wedding rings again months ago and since then the three of them had been searching for another ring to match. Jemma was fairly certain Hunter had called in a favor from Fitz to find one that was identical instead of just similar, and that morning she had been presented with a plain gold band and promised she could have a nice rock if she wanted one.

Jemma didn’t need a diamond - having one ring was more than enough, especially since it matched the others perfectly. She ran her thumb over Hunter’s band again, enjoying the way it glided easily under her touch and how it captured the warmth of Hunter’s skin. As far as anyone else was concerned she wasn’t married, but the last year had taught Jemma how little she cared about anyone else’s opinion of her relationship.

“I do.” He kissed Jemma’s neck once, curling his other arm around her so he could copy her movement. His fingers caught on her wedding ring and held for a moment before he released her so they could follow Bobbi down to the beach. It was surprisingly empty for a Friday afternoon, and in no time at all they had their blanket set up, an umbrella stuck in the sand nearby to provide some shade.

Jemma wiggled her toes in the white sand, prepared for memories that never surfaced. She still had dreams about Maveth, and if she let her mind wander too far sometimes she found herself lightyears away from earth, but now even surrounded by sand she wasn’t pulled back to the most treacherous months of her life. 

The sand on Maveth hadn’t been soft like this, the sun hadn’t been bright and golden, and she hadn’t had the people she loved on either side of her, continuing to bicker about sunscreen and ice cream and other beach essentials. Jemma reached for Bobbi’s hand and the bickering faded into silence instantly.

“Alright?” Bobbi asked, squeezing Jemma’s hand.

“Yeah,” she answered. “Hunter?”

“Hmm? I’m fine, love.” He smiled at her, dimples appearing in the corners of his mouth. “I’ve got plenty to distract me from less savory memories.”

“Bobbi in a bikini,” Jemma guessed. The swaths of tan skin Bobbi was showing off in her ocean-blue bikini had certainly distracted Jemma, and she liked to think she had a bit more self-control than her husband.

“Bobbi in a bikini,” he agreed. “And yourself in a bikini, Dr. Simmons.”

“Me?” Jemma asked, pinkening. Jemma understood Bobbi in a bikini being attractive, but occasionally she still forgot she had the same effect on Hunter.

“Don’t play coy,” Hunter said, abandoning Bobbi so he could crowd into Jemma’s personal space. “You know I find you _extremely_ appealing.”

“Public beach,” Bobbi warned before Hunter could start putting his hands in inappropriate places. Jemma stifled a disappointed sigh. Maybe next time they could find a _private_ beach.

Another gull swooped overhead, fluttering down until it alighted at the tideline. It began pecking at the wet sand, looking for… worms? It had been a while since Jemma had studied the marine ecosystem. All her recent projects were focused on xenobiology and the samples Hunter had brought from Maveth. She hadn’t been able to publish any of her papers thanks to the classified nature of the mission to Maveth (and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s general existence still not being public knowledge), but the information she was collecting about Maveth was more than enough to mentally stimulate her.

“Want to go into the water?” Jemma offered, hoping to distract Hunter from letting his hands wander and herself from thinking about her work. This was supposed to be a vacation. A honeymoon, if she was being sentimental.

“You two go. I have some reading I want to get done,” Bobbi said, setting herself onto the beach chair and materializing a book in record time. The scar on her knee was more pronounced with the tanness of her skin, but it was still much fainter and thinner than it had been last year. Bobbi didn’t walk with a limp anymore, didn’t check her step on uneven ground. The injury had taken its toll on her, but she was better now.

“Enjoy your book,” Jemma said, kissing Bobbi’s cheek. “Wave if you need anything.”

“You don’t need to fuss over me,” Bobbi grumbled, pulling Jemma in for another kiss. “Lance is the one you really need to be watching out for.”

“He won’t die from a sunburn,” Jemma promised, unable to resist the urge to steal just one more kiss from her wife. Bobbi smelled like sunscreen and sea salt and everything else about the beach Jemma loved - like she could absorb everything good from the world around her and leave the rest behind. 

“I won’t,” Hunter agreed, swooping in to smack a kiss of his own on Bobbi’s opposite cheek. “I’ve made it too far to be taken down by a skin condition.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Bobbi said, running her hand over Hunter’s cheek. “Don’t die out there, okay?”

“I _just_ said I wouldn’t.” Hunter pressed another resolute kiss against Bobbi’s mouth. “Jemma will keep me safe.”

“I will.” Jemma nodded. “The big, scary scientist will keep the poor little soldier safe.”

“You’re going to pay for that,” Hunter warned, a moment before scooping Jemma up into a bridal carry.

“Hunter!” she shrieked as he broke into a run, paying no heed to how much she was bouncing in his arms. He didn’t stop, though - not until he was chest-deep in the water and could dump her into the ocean. Jemma managed to get in a deep breath before her head disappeared under the surf, and she gasped in another one when she broke through the waves.

“That wasn’t very nice!” she sputtered, teeth chattering. Even under the hot August sun the ocean was _cold_!

“Neither was teasing me,” Hunter said, drawing her in close to his chest. Bobbi was still sitting on her beach chair, and even from far away it was clear she was doubled over in laughter.

“She looks beautiful,” Jemma said, almost absently.

“She does.” Hunter laced his hands at the small of Jemma’s back and he rested his head on her shoulder. “We did it, Jem,” he murmured, brushing a kiss against her skin.

“What’s that?” she asked, still watching Bobbi sitting on the shore. Her hair was catching in the afternoon sun, streaks of gold and dandelion and honey shifting like a prism of all the brightest things.

“We came back to her,” Hunter said. It was what they had fought so hard for through all their months on Maveth - for moments like this, where they could be _happy_. Even if they had never imagined it would look like this, with three people in love instead of two, Jemma wouldn’t have traded this moment for anything.

“And,” Hunter whispered watching as Bobbi tipped her head back to the sky, “we gave her the sun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end! A specially big thank you to Libby ([@LibbyWeasley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/libbyweasley)) for betaing the first eight(?) chapters. She would've undoubtedly betad the rest had I not consistently forgotten to send them to her. 😅 This story wouldn't have been the same without her and I owe her a debt of gratitude. And of course a thank you to all of you for coming on this journey with me - I hope you loved the ending as much as I did. :)
> 
> If you're interested in seeing what I'm working on next, you can find me [on tumblr](https://bobbimorseisbisexual.tumblr.com/)! 
> 
> Lots of love,  
> Al


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